410 INFECTION AND RESISTANCE 



consequence there was an excess of "sessile receptors" by means of 

 which the cell was rendered more exposed to toxin action than it was 

 normally it being still unprotected by the presence of freely cir- 

 culating "antitoxin" receptors. The difficulties arising from the 

 observation of similar hypersusceptibility in animals whose blood 

 contained free antitoxin were disposed of by Wassermann by the 

 convenient assumption of variations of affinity. 



He assumed that the treatment with toxin, i. e., the intoxication, 

 may induce a condition of higher affinity for the poison on the part 

 of the sessile cell receptors, leading to a selective toxin-absorption by 

 the cells and consequent greater susceptibility to injury. With 

 Behring, he speaks of this as a "histogenic hypersusceptibility," 

 implying an increased vulnerability of the tissue cells. 



The analogy between these early observations and the phenomena 

 which we now classify as anaphylaxis is unquestionably a striking 

 one. However, it is doubtful, as Friedemann suggests, whether the 

 two processes depend upon similar mechanisms. For, as we have 

 seen in the case of the sensitiveness to toxin, we are dealing with 

 primarily poisonous substances against which in the reacting animal 

 neutralizing antibodies are found a combination of conditions quite 

 different from those with which we are confronted in hypersuscepti- 

 bility against primarily harmless proteins. It is, of course, possible 

 that the toxin hypersusceptibility is a true anaphylaxis against the 

 toxin-protein independent of the specifically poisonous nature of 

 this substance. However, this is unlikely, since Lb'wi and Meyer 84 

 have shown that with tetanus toxin, the symptoms of such hypersus- 

 ceptibility are not those of anaphylaxis, but of increased but charac- 

 teristic tetanus poisoning. The fact that toxin hypersusceptibility 

 cannot be passively transferred with the serum of a susceptible ani- 

 mal does not seem to us a good argument against its anaphylactic na- 

 ture, since this, as we shall see, is equally impossible in the case of 

 tuberculin susceptibility, which is in all probability a modified exam- 

 ple of true anaphylaxis. Lowi and Meyer regard tetanus toxin hyper- 

 susceptibility as a "summation" meaning thereby that it depends 

 upon an alteration of the cells of the spinal cord because of traces of 

 the poison retained in them. When the toxin was given intraneurally 

 no antitoxin formation occurred, but the animals developed a marked 

 hypersusceptibility in the course of several weeks, showing that 

 here, unlike true anaphylaxis, specific antibodies play no part. 



'Not unlike toxin hypersusceptibility is that which is noticed in 

 the case of certain medicinal substances. Such are the so-called 

 idiosyncrasies against cocain, pilocarpin, morphin, quinin, and other 

 drugs. These conditions have no direct relation to anaphylaxis, and, 



84 Lowi and Meyer. Festschrift, Schmiedeberg Suppl., Arch. f. exp. 

 Path. u. Therap., 1908, p. 355. 



