Mat 29, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



803 



A comparison of this medium with Endo medium 

 showed that the colon count on asparagin agar was 

 much lower than that on the other medium. We 

 found, however, that in some cases at least it was 

 impossible to consider all typical colonies on Endo 

 plates as colon bacilli. Certain strains of S. eoli 

 failed to give typical colonies on Endo plates and 

 acid and peptonizing bacteria gave reactions sim- 

 ilar to some of the colon strains. 



It is evident that we have no entirely satisfac- 

 tory method for the determination of colon bacilli, 

 but it is believed that the use of synthetic media 

 may be developed to a point where it will be su- 

 perior to other methods. 



A Satisfactory Platinum Needle: L. A. EoGESs. 

 The tendency of platinum needles set in glass 

 handles to break when they are flamed, is a source 

 of annoyance. A needle which will avoid this 

 trouble may be made by fusing the platinum wire 

 into a copper wire. This may be done by twisting 

 a bit of small wire about the platinum wire and 

 holding in the flame of a blast lamp until it forms 

 a ball at the end of the wire. The copper ball and 

 the end of a copper wire of the proper size are held 

 together in the flame until they fuse. The rough 

 joint obtained may be hammered or filed to ap- 

 proximately the diameter of the copper wire, which 

 should be large enough to insure rigidity. The 

 " wire may be mounted in a capillary tube or in an 

 ordinary glass tube with plaster of Paris. The 

 needle may be thoroughly flamed without danger 

 of breaking. 



FEIDAY, JANUARY 2 



Immunity 

 On the Value of a New STcin Test for Diagnosis of 



Tuberculosis: Dr. J. Bronfenbrenner. 



In the work reported to this society last year by 

 Dr. Manwaring and myselfi and subsequently con- 

 tinued and published in the Journal of Experimen- 

 tal Medicine,- it was shown that tuberculous 

 guinea-pigs acquire the power of reducing the num- 

 ber of tubercle bacilli injected into their peritoneal 

 cavity; that certain fixed cells of the peritoneal 

 cavity were apparently responsible for this phe- 

 nomenon, as even removed from the body of the 

 guinea-pig the isolated peritoneal tissues of tuber- 

 culosis animals had the power of reducing the num- 

 ber of tubercle bacilli placed in contact with them ; 

 that, however, as far as our experiments went the 



1 Centrbl. f. Bad. Mef., Bd. 59, No. 12, p. 371. 



2 Jour, of Exp. Med., 1913, Vol. XVIII., No. 6, 

 p. 601. 



intraperitoneal destruction of tubercle bacilli in 

 tuberculous animals was not caused by circulating 

 antibody. It was thought, however, worth while to 

 investigate what changes the blood of these guinea- 

 pigs underwent in the conditions of the experi- 

 ment, as it seemed improbable that the cells of the 

 peritoneal cavity could have acquired immune 

 properties without these being present in the 

 blood. A series of experiments was undertaken to 

 test complement deviation on the blood of tuber- 

 culous animals, but the results obtained varied 

 with the different strains of tubercle bacillus used 

 as antigen. In general, however, experiments 

 showed that the blood of guinea-pigs often con- 

 tains specific antibody against tuberculous antigen. 

 Having established this fact, an attempt was made 

 to see if this antibody is of the nature of a bae- 

 teriolysin. The series of experiments were per- 

 formed both in vitro and in vivo. In the course 

 of this last series of experiments a very interesting 

 phenomenon was noticed, namely: that if a normal 

 guinea-pig was injected intraperitoneally with a 

 mixture of the serum of a tuberculous guinea-pig 

 with the peritoneal exudate resulting from the injec- 

 tion of a small amount (10,000) of tubercle bacUli 

 in the peritoneal cavity of another highly immunized 

 guinea-pig, often a local reaction would result on 

 the spot of inoculation, followed by a rise of tem- 

 perature. This local reaction was especially pro- 

 nounced in the cases where the peritoneal wall was 

 punctured several times for the purpose of remov- 

 ing a sample of the exudate, and in this way prob- 

 ably a part of the mixture was introduced from 

 within the peritoneal cavity under the skin of the 

 animal. In analyzing this phenomenon it was 

 found that the peritoneal exudate employed in 

 these experiments could be conveniently replaced 

 by a crude tuberculin as prepared by the Board of 

 Health of New York, but not very well by a, sus- 

 pension of washed tubercle bacilli. The non- 

 washed (possibly partly autolyzed) suspension of 

 tubercle bacilli, especially if not freshly prepared, 

 could also be used successfully. Since then, a num- 

 ber of tests were performed in which guinea-pig 

 serum was replaced by the serum of tuberculous 

 patients, and it was found that the reaction, al- 

 though not very constant, is of a prognostic value 

 in tuberculosis. 



While the work is still in progress, the experi- 

 ments performed up to date seem to show that the 

 complement is an important factor in the phe- 

 nomenon, inasmuch as heated sera failed to give 

 this reaction, yet if activated by the addition of a 

 complement and left at room temperature for a 



