ANAPHYLAXIS 401 



The recent work of Coca, 49 too, has further fortified the cellular 

 point of view by a method which in principle is similar to that 

 employed by Pearce and Eisenbrey. Coca succeeded in perfusing 

 actively and passively sensitized guinea pigs with the defibrinated 

 blood of normal guinea pigs in such a way that the original blood of 

 the sensitized animals was reduced to a necessarily slight residue. 

 Animals so treated could be kept alive for as long as six hours after 

 the transfusions and remained delicately hypersusceptible in spite 

 of the blood substitution. 



Limiting ourselves for the present to the phenomena of anaphy- 

 laxis in which noncellular antigens are employed, we may safely 

 say that the evidence furnished by the incubation time necessary in 

 passive anaphylaxis, by the transfusion experiments of Pearce and 

 Eisenbrey and of Coca, and most conclusively by the work on iso- 

 lated tissue by Schultz, by Dale and by Weil, shows conclusively 

 that the hypersusceptible state is largely determined by a changed 

 reaction-capacity to the specific antigen on the part of the fixed tissue 

 cells an "alergie" which is probably due to the presence of specific 

 antibodies in the substance of the cell protoplasm, and incidentally 

 accounts for such effects as the skin reactions. It is probable that 

 the acute symptoms and death of anaphylactic guinea pigs (and 

 perhaps of other animals) is in most cases of experimental ana- 

 phylaxis due to the reaction which takes place between the injected 

 antigen and these sessile receptors. 



Now, as to the identification of the anaphylactic antibody with 

 some one of the well-known antibodies, the assumption is that ia 

 cellular anaphylaxis (as in the corpuscle experiments of Friede- 

 mann and in the bacterial experiments of Friedberger and others) 

 the so-called sensitizer or amboceptor is to be held responsible. This 

 seems reasonable, and there is much evidence in its favor, no reliable 

 evidence against it. 



In the case of serum anaphylaxis extensive work has been done 

 to show a parallelism between the anaphylactic antibody and the 

 precipitins. This we have seen principally in the experiments of 

 Doerr and Russ, and those of Friedberger. 



The problem becomes a complicated one when we attempt then 

 to define the nature of the precipitins and their relation to the anti- 

 bodies hypothetically advanced as "albuminolysins" by Gengou> 

 Without going into this point extensively at present, it may be per- 

 mitted to refer the reader to the chapters on alexin fixation and 

 precipitins, and to reiterate the writer's 50 own opinion, which is 

 that much reasonable evidence points to the fact that the so-called 

 precipitins are in truth protein-sensitizers, in structure and function 

 identical with the sensitizers or amboceptors of cytolytic processes. 



49 Coca. Ztschr. f. Immunitatsforsch., 1914, xx. 



50 Zinsser. Jour. Exp. Med., Vol. 15, 1912, and Vol. 18, 1913. 



T 



