Agglutination 383 



During his experiments upon the agglutination of tubercle 

 bacilli to be described below, Koch* found that animals 

 injected with an emulsion of tubercle bacilli showed great 

 increase in the agglutinative power of the blood. This 

 led him to suggest that a new preparation, "bacillary emul- 

 sion" [Bazillen emulsion] be investigated for its immunizing 

 and curative properties. Many are still using it and some 

 claim good results. 



It is almost impossible to make an accurate estimation 

 of the usefulness or uselessness of therapeutic preparations 

 of tubercle bacilli at the present time, not only because of 

 their diversity of composition and the enthusiasm with 

 which many have been exploited, but also because of our 

 inability to compare the results attained with any definite 

 standard. The advantages or disadvantages of any prepara- 

 tion, therefore, depend upon the personal opinions of those 

 employing them rather than upon any demonstration 

 regarding them a very unscientific state of knowledge. 



The suggestion of A. E. Wright that the administration 

 of all such products should be governed by an examination 

 of the opsonic power of the blood, the remedy being withheld 

 if this was high and applied if low, the utmost care being 

 taken not to prolong the "negative phase," seemed to be an 

 excellent one, affording the beginning of a scientific method 

 of studying the disease, but unfortunately it seems not to 

 have been successful in practice, and the tedium of the 

 examinations is against their use unless their utility is greater 

 than it seems to be. 



Agglutination. Arloingf and Courmont| found it pos- 

 sible to prepare homogenized cultures of the tubercle 

 bacillus, and saw them agglutinated by the serum of immu- 

 nized animals and by the serum of tuberculous patients. 

 The subject was investigated by Koch, who carefully 

 reviews the details of technic and investigates the method, 

 which, he concludes, is valueless for the diagnosis of human 

 infection, though a good guide to the extent of immunization 

 achieved by the therapeutic administration of tuberculin-R. 



* "Deutsche med. Woch.," 1901, No. 48, p. 829. 



t "Congress de med. int. Montpellier," 1898; "Compt. rendu Acad. 

 de Sciences de Paris," 1898, T. cxxvi, pp. 1319-1321. 



t "Compt. rend. Soc. de Biol. de Paris," 1898, No. 28, v; "Congr. 

 pour 1'etude de la Tuberculose," Paris, 1898. 



"Deutsche med. Wochenschrift," 1901, No. 48, p. 829. 



