THE NONSPECIFIC REACTION 67 



Hektoen, working with rabbits sensitized long before to horse 

 serum, found that when at a subsequent period the same animals were 

 injected with some other variety of serum, the animals again yielded 

 the specific horse agglutinin first formed. This flushing out of a 

 specific antibody under the stimulus of some other and quite differ- 

 ent protein has been suggested as a basis of the therapeutic effect 

 of nonspecific therapy. 



Thus Miiller and Weiss thought that this was the explanation of 

 their results in the treatment of gonorrheal complications with gon- 

 ococcus and other vaccine, but serological tests failed to confirm this 

 view. Ichikawa assumed the same basis for his experiments in 

 typhoid. 



Experimentally the results of Conradi and Bieling, and Bieling 

 deserve much interest in this connection, indeed the facts brought 

 out in Bieling's recent paper would seem to have a direct bearing oni 

 a number of important questions in infectious diseases. Conradi 

 and Bieling treated rabbits with typhoid bacilli and determined the 

 titer of agglutinin. They then injected colon, dysentery and diph- 

 theria bacilli and observed the same increase in agglutinins that 

 has been described in Hektoen's paper. Bieling has continued these 

 experiments and has found that animals sensitized to dysentery are' 

 able to form antibodies against typhoid bacilli when only minute 

 doses of typhoid antigen are injected into them. The sensitized ani- 

 mals can elaborate specific antibodies when only a minute fraction 

 of the amount of the new antigen that would be required in a normal 

 animal is injected. In other words, the first immunization leaves the 

 animal in a state of nonspecific hypersensitiveness during which it is 

 much more reactive to stimuli of all kinds. 



The results of these experiments which have been confirmed and 

 extended by Pinner and Ivanfievic have their direct bearing on the 

 problem under consideration and aid in explaining some of the di- 

 vergent observations tfrat have been recorded by clinicians after non- 

 specific injections. We may expect that if injections are made in 

 patients who have been previously immunized that they will respond 

 with an increase in the antibody titer of the serum; if they are in- 

 jected during the course of a disease, antibodies which have been 

 formed in the cells but not yet cast off may be "shed" as Larson has 

 suggested, and we may then determine an increase in the serum. On 

 the other hand, if they have been thrown into the circulation during 

 the course of a disease as rapidly as formed, we cannot expect any 

 increase in the titer. We may also assume that with the stimulation 

 of the cellular activity ("plasmaactivation") the cells will respond 

 by producing an increased amount of antibodies if they are still 

 capable of such response. 



Baluit found that in typhoid patients injected intravenously with 

 typhoid vaccine, there was no definite alteration in the antibodies 



