396 INFECTION AND RESISTANCE 



which would prove that the proteolytic action of the guinea-pig serum 

 must have been active against its own proteins. 



An interesting further development of this work has recently 

 appeared in the experiments of Jobling and Petersen. 40 They 

 showed that when bacteria are mixed with fresh active serum they 

 adsorb the antienzymes normally present in blood. They have shown 

 this experimentally and have proved that similar antienzyme re- 

 moval can be accomplished by the addition of kaolin or agar, and by 

 treatment with chloroform. Serums so treated become toxic, the 

 actions of the poisons formed showing great similarity to that pro- 

 duced by Friedberger's anaphylatoxins. According to them, the 

 poisons are formed because of the fact that antienzymes are adsorbed 

 by the antigen, thus setting the normal ferments in the fresh serum 

 free to act on their own serum protein. 



It should be recalled that Friedemann, who was really the first 

 one to show that the toxic substances could result from the interaction 

 of fresh serum and sensitized antigens, although he succeeded only 

 in doing this with red blood cells, suggested rather early that the 

 success of such an experiment does not necessarily mean that the 

 antigen furnishes the matrix entirely. He had studied the metabo- 

 lism in anaphylactic poisoning and with Isaac has shown that the 

 nitrogen output following reinjection in a sensitized animal is far in 

 excess of that which could be derived solely from the injected antigen, 

 and in this he has been confirmed by many other workers, notably by 

 Vaughan. Moreover, recent investigations of Jobling and others have 

 seemed to show that proteolysis is not necessarily a function of 

 antibodies but is accomplished by non-specific proteoses in the blood. 



It would seem to us that our present knowledge of this phase of 

 anaphylactic investigation permits us only to conclude that wherever 

 proteolytic changes take place these "proteotoxins" may be formed. 

 That they can be produced from a protein antigen has been shown 

 beyond doubt by Vaughan and his collaborators for both formed and 

 unformed antigens. Also this is evident from the experiments of 

 many workers and has been confirmed in our own experience with 

 poisons appearing during the autolysis of bacterial emulsions. On 

 the other hand, it is also clear that the antigen need not represent 

 the matrix which furnishes the poison, and that in the reactions as 

 they are generally performed both in the test tube and in the animal 

 body, it is more than likely that if an antigen participates at all in 

 furnishing the substratum for the poison, this is probably less impor- 

 tant than that furnished by the animal's own proteins. However, 

 this does not weaken the importance of the knowledge that the 

 antigen-antibody reaction in the presence of normal serum and cer- 

 tain antigens in the presence of normal serum alone, induce a reac- 

 tion in the course of which such poisons are formed. And the fact 



40 Jobling and Petersen. Jour. Exper. Med., 1914, xix, No. 5. 



