BACTERIOLYSINS AND H^MOLYSINS 



Historical. As far back as 1874, Gscheidlen 

 and Traube l demonstrated that considerable quan- 

 tities of septic material could be injected into the 

 circulation of warm-blooded animals without 

 apparently any effect on the animal. Very little 

 was thought of this observation at the time, and it 

 is not until more than ten years later that we find 

 a similar observation made by Fodor. 2 In 1888 

 Nuttall 3 showed that normal blood serum possessed 

 marked germicidal properties, and his observations 

 stimulated a number of workers who undertook to 

 determine the conditions most favorable to the 

 exhibition of this phenomenon, and further to 

 decide upon the constituent of the serum to which 

 this property was due or whether it was a function 

 of the serum as a whole. In 1899 Buchner 4 pub- 

 lished a series of experiments and showed that an 

 exposure of 55C. robs the serum of its bacteri- 

 cidal property. He also concluded that the active 

 element in the process was a living albumin and 



1 Gscheidlen and Traube. Schlez. Gesellschaft. f. Vater- 

 land. Cultur, Med. Sect., 1874. 



2 Fodor, Deutsche med. Wochenschr, 1886. 



3 Nutall, Zeitschr. f. Hygiene, Vol. iv, 1888. 



4 Buchner, Centralblatt Bacteriologie, Vol. v, 1889. Archiv. 

 f. Hygiene, Vol. x, 1890. 



47 



