50 IMMUNE SERA 



ing human blood for this purpose. Landois 4 in a 

 study published in 1875 showed that while trans- 

 fusion of a foreign blood might prove fatal to an 

 animal the transfusion from a closely related species 

 produced no ill effects. In 1898 Belfanti and 

 Carbone 2 showed that if horses were injected with 

 red blood cells of rabbits, the serum thereafter 

 obtained from the horses would have acquired an 

 appreciable toxicity for rabbits. Shortly after this, 

 Bordet published a very interesting series of experi- 

 ments. He showed that the serum of guinea pigs 

 after these had been injected several times with 3 

 to 5 cc. of defibrinated rabbits' blood acquires the 

 property to dissolve rapidly and intensely, in a 

 test-tube, the red blood cells of a rabbit; whereas 

 the serum of a normal guinea pig is incapable of 

 doing this, or does it in only a slight degree. Bordet 

 could further show that this action is a specific one, 

 i.e., the serum of animals treated with rabbit blood 

 acquires this dissolving property only for the red 

 cells of rabbits, not for those of any other species 

 of animal. For the latter, such a serum is no more 

 strongly solvent than the serum of a normal animal. 

 The same property that Bordet had demonstrated 

 in the serum of guinea pigs treated with rabbit 

 blood could now be shown for the sera of all ani- 



1 Landois, Zur Lehre von der Bluttransfusion, Leipzig, 1875. 



2 Belfanti and Carbone, Giorn. della R. Acad. di Med. di 

 Torino, 1898. 



