AGGLUTININS 37 



Historical Serum diagnosis by means of the 



agglutinins was introduced chiefly through the 

 labors of Gruber and Widal. The studies under- 

 taken by Gruber and his pupil Durham began as 

 early as 1894. At the Congress for Internal Medi- 

 cine in 1896 l Gruber first announced that he had 

 discovered the reaction in typhoid convalescents, 

 and asked that his observations be verified if pos- 

 sible. Soon after this Pfeiffer and his co-workers 

 published a study which confirmed Gruber's results. 2 

 The significance of the reaction as a diagnostic 

 help was unquestionably first pointed out by Widal, 3 

 who showed that the reaction appears at a relatively 

 early period of the disease, and may therefore be 

 employed as a diagnostic measure. We must not 

 omit to state that Griinbaum 4 in March, 1896, several 

 months before Widal's publication, had also grasped 

 the significance of the reaction as a diagnostic 

 measure. Owing to insufficient clinical material 

 his publication did not appear until some time after 

 Widal's. Hence, in acknowledgment of the labors 

 of the two authors most concerned in the discovery 

 and introduction of this reaction, we now speak 



1 Transactions of the Congress, edited by E. von Leyden and 

 R. Pfeiffer, Wiesbaden, 1896. 



2 Pfeiffer and Kolle, Deutsche med. Wochenschrift, 1896, 

 No. 12. 



3 Widal, Bulletin de la soc. mdd. des hop., June 26, 1896. 



4 Grunbaum, Lancet, Sept. 19, 1896; Muench. med. Wochen- 

 schrift, 1897, No. 13; Blood and the identification of bacterial 

 species, Science Progress, Vol. I, No. 5, 1897. 



