﻿258 STRONG. 



drop preparations, the Bacillus pestis flourished in the serum of normal individ- 

 uals, when a quantity of serum from a plague convalescent was infected with 

 this organism the latter was destroyed after twenty-four hours. The growth of 

 the plague bacillus was said to be inhibited, in the case of blood taken from 

 patients in the early stage of the disease or from those tending to recover. In 

 a later paper T4 he pointed out that this bactericidal reaction of the pest bacillus 

 resulted from the action of immune bodies plus complement, and that the action 

 of plague serum could he suspended by the usual method of inaetivation and 

 it could again be reactivated by the addition of fresh complement. He claimed 

 that Roux's serum which had been inactivated, could be reactivated by fresh 

 complement obtained from either man, the dog, rat, or monkey. However, Row's 

 experiments seem inconclusive and unconvincing owing to the technique employed. 



In 1906, Lamb and Foster " again emphasized the fact that not only normal 

 human serum, but also that of other mammals, was devoid of any bactericidal 

 action on Bacillus pestis. 



Schouroupoff. 70 who demonstrated that the pest bacilli which were injected into 

 animals immunized against pest, disappeared after a very short time, concluded 

 that the antipest serum is also partly bactericidal in its action. 



Lohlein " very recently communicated the results of his studies upon phago- 

 cytosis in pest and anthrax to the Association of Microbiology at Berlin. He 

 found that while in the animal body almost no phagocytosis of virulent pest 

 strains occurred, in vitro the organisms were taken up by the carefully washed 

 white blood corpuscles of the most susceptible experimental animals and he 

 further demonstrated that while phagocytosis of the virulent pest organism was 

 not dependent upon the action of dissolved opsonic substances, such action was 

 promoted by normal guinea pig serum. The same phenomena were observed with 

 dilutions of specific plague serum. In the case of undiluted serum, or in its 

 lower dilutions, the serum was strongly agglutinative, so that the result was 

 obscured. Lohlein, in accord with the experiments of Markl, found that in 

 vitro the most marked prevention to the growth of virulent pest bacilli occurred 

 when immune serum and leucocytes were placed in contact with the pest bacilli. 

 Upon injecting virulent pest germs into the "prepared" abdominal cavity of 

 guinea pigs, a marked phagocytosis of the bacteria also occurred. A rapid 

 diminution of the bacteria at first, as well as of the animal cells in the abdominal 

 cavity, also occurred upon injecting these organisms into the abdominal cavity 

 of a normal guinea pig or rat. A dissolution of the bacteria was not observed, 

 but the organisms were taken up by phagocytic cells in different portions of the 

 abdomen and in the omentum. Later, a marked increase in the number of 

 leucocytes in the abdominal cavity took place and especially, the bacteria became 

 increased in number. These organisms, which were termed "bacteria of the 

 second generation," increased up to the time of the death of the animal. The 

 bacteria which appeared after the "negative" period were not usually taken up 

 by phagocytes. This failure of the leucocytes to ingest them was evidently not 

 due to an injury to the phagocytic properties of these cells, as was demonstrated 

 by the further injection of staphylococci into the abdominal cavity, the latter 

 organisms undergoing active phagocytosis. Lohlein thought this phenomenon 

 might be explained either upon the assumption of the presence of a soluble 



7i Brit. Med. Journ. (190.3), 1078. 

 "'Lancet (1906), 171, 9. 



™ Arch, des Sci. Biologiques (1905), 11, 196. 

 "Ventrbl. f. Bakteriol. Abt. I (1906), 38, 32. 



