196 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIX. No. 1260 



the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science an application for a grant of 

 funds. (Pursuant to an action taken by botan- 

 ists at the dinner for all botanists.) 



It was voted that the executive committee be 

 informed that it is the consensus of opinion of 

 the group present that the sections " bacteriol- 

 ogy " and " cytology " be abandoned with the 

 definite understanding that abstracts of ar- 

 ticles in these fields be cared for by the other 

 sections. 



It was voted to appoint a committee, not con- 

 fined to the board, whose duty it should be to 

 prepare a list of all serials containing material 

 to be abstracted for Botanical Aistracts and to 

 appoint collaborators for such serials. J. R. 

 Schramm was appointed chairman of the com- 

 mittee with power to select other mtembers. 



It was voted that the matter of including 

 abstracts of zoological literature in Botanical 

 Abstracts be left for the present to the discre- 

 tion of the several editors, and that it be sug- 

 gested to the conamittee that it limit its lists 

 largely to plant literature. 



Adjournment taken at three o'clock. 



J. E. Schramm, 

 Temporary Secretary of the Board of 

 Control of Bat. Ahsts. 



SPECIAL ARTICLES 



NON-SPECIFIC PROTEIN ANTIGENS PREPARED 

 FROM SHATTERED HEMO-PROTEINS 



For some time past I have been in quest of 

 new methods to aid in combating various in- 

 fections. I have tried out inhalations of sev- 

 eral gases, hypodermic and intravenous injec- 

 tions of several salts and bases and acids, with 

 practical negative results. However, recently 

 I have obtained some very promising results 

 while working upon the following hypothesis : 

 In the blood and the blood-forming organs one 

 may fijid the various compounds from which 

 the building stones from which the various 

 anti-^bodies are formed during the process of 

 active immunity to infection. Therefore the 

 blood, or blood-forming organs may be the best 

 material in which to find chemical compounds 

 which may be isolated and used artificially to 

 help the body resist infection. The blood in 



all probability contains the compounds which, 

 when broken down to just the proper state of 

 division, would yield a large number of pro- 

 teins of relatively small molecular weight, 

 which might act as antigens when introduced 

 into the blood stream. The number and va- 

 riety of these shattered products of blood di- 

 gestion are doubtless very great, and some of 

 them might well do the work of an antigen for 

 almost any infection. In short, if the blood 

 were properly digested and the various frag- 

 ments of the digested blood tried out, it might 

 be possible to find compounds which would 

 not act harmfully in any way but would act as 

 antigens in a great variety of infections. 



In order to shatter the protein of the blood 

 without destroying the particles it seemed best 

 to employ no strong acids nor strong alkalis, 

 nor any alcohol; but instead to use natural di- 

 gestive enzymes. As a preliminary experiment 

 I used Witte's peptone as a source for obtain- 

 ing these shattered proteins. This worked very 

 well, for Witte's peptone, being made from 

 peptic digestion of blood fibrin proved to be 

 very rich in these protein bodies. After trying 

 Witte's peptone I prepared my own peptone 

 and from that prepared my protein, from the 

 fibrin of ox-blood by digestion with hydro- 

 chloric acid and pepsin. This method seems to 

 be satisfactory. After the mixture of protein 

 is prepared, it is separated into various parts 

 such as primary and secondary proteoses and 

 peptones. A mixture of secondary proteoses 

 constitutes the protein we have used. The pro- 

 tein fractions were separated by precipitation 

 with ammonium sulpihate, the lower fractions 

 being used, the other fractions rejected. 



After long and careful testing on animals I 

 have been using the protein in collaboration 

 with clinical men on several different infec- 

 tions. Although the clinical side of the work 

 has been going forward for over a year, in most 

 diseases we are still far from a definite conclu- 

 sion. However, Dr. Stanton and myself work- 

 ing on acute and chronic arthritis have found 

 out that the protein is a very powerful remedy. 

 It has given uniformly successful results on 

 almost one hundred eases. Some of these were 

 acute and others were chronic cases of years 



