404 INFECTION AND RESISTANCE 



which had been treated as described were now able to withstand the 

 anaphylatoxin These experiments of Bessau would indicate that 

 antianaphylaxis was to a certain extent due to tolerance to the poison, 

 and that it was non-specific. Friedberger, together with Szymanow- 

 ski, Kumagai, Odaira and Lura, later studied this problem and came 

 to the conclusion that antianaphylaxis is strictly specific, depending, 

 as Friedberger had suggested, upon the diminution of specific anti- 

 bodies rather than upon tolerance to the poison. They claimed that 

 animals that had been sensitized and then had survived the "shock" 

 dose of homologous protein showed no tolerance for anaphylatoxin, 

 and that animals that had been treated with the sublethal dose of 

 anaphylatoxin are, for 24 hours, as sensitive to anaphylatoxin, how- 

 ever prepared, as are normal animals. Recent studies along the 

 same lines by Zinsser and Dwyer 59 have yielded results differing 

 from these conclusions. Working with typhoid anaphylatoxin they 

 found that guinea pigs treated with a sublethal dose of anaphylatoxin 

 develop a tolerance which enabled them to resist 1% to 2 units of 

 poison, the tolerance developing within three days and lasting, to a 

 slight degree, for as long as two months. It seemed to them that 

 animals treated with a second dose of anaphylatoxin within 24 hours 

 after the first, if the results of this first injection have been severe, as 

 they usually are, are still weak and generally depressed in vitality 

 so that a developed tolerance may be clouded by this condition. The 

 tolerance did not seem to be strictly specific in that typhoid anaphy- 

 latoxin seemed to produce a moderate tolerance to prodigiosus 

 anaphylatoxin. 



It would seem, therefore, that in antianaphylaxis we might have 

 two very important elements. The one strictly specific depends upon 

 the depletion of antigen from the body, a true "desensitization." The 

 other non-specific, and probably of secondary importance since so 

 far it has not been shown to any very powerful degree, consists of 

 the development of tolerance by the body cells for the anaphy lactic 

 poison. 



NATURE OF ANAPHYLACTIC POISON 



As to the nature of the anaphylactic poison we are also to a large 

 extent in the dark. From the experimentation upon the production 

 of these poisons in vitro it appears that they are protein cleavage 

 products. This is indirectly indicated also by metabolism experi- 

 ments such as those of Friedemann and Isaak, 60 and of Weichhardt 

 and Schittenhelm. 61 It appeared from this work that, as measured 



59 Zinsser and Dwyer. Reported at the meeting of Am. Ass. of Path, and 

 Bact., Toronto, April, 1914. 



60 Friedemann and Isaak. Zeitschr. f. exp. Path. u. Ther., Vol. 1, 1905. 



61 Schittenhelm u. Weichhardt. Munch, med. Woch., 1910, No. 34, and 

 1911. 



