THE LYSmS. 137 



that the serum of the guinea-pig agglutinated and dissolved the cor- 

 puscles of the birds both inside and outside the body. Metschni- 

 koff* repeated these experiments using the blood of the goose, and 

 Krompecher * has done the same with the corpuscles of the frog. It 

 should be stated that there is some advantage in the use of nucleated 

 red cells for injection purposes, inasmuch as the nuclei are not dis- 

 solved and the number of free nuclei is an index to the degree ot 

 hemolysis. If to a drop of the serum of a rabbit which has been 

 immunized to chicken's blood, there be added a small quantity of 

 chicken blood and guinea-pig blood, and the mixture be examined 

 under the microscope, it will be seen that at first the nucleated cells 

 of the chicken blood agglutinate while the cells of the guinea-pig 

 blood remain evenly distributed and later the chicken blood under- 

 goes hemolysis, while that of the guinea-pig remains unaffected. 



Mosso ' found that the popular belief that the blood of the eel is 

 poisonous to mammals is true, and he demonstrated that the intrave- 

 nous injection of 0.1 c.c. of eel serum per kilogram of body weight into 

 rabbits and guinea-pigs induced death within three minutes and that 

 post-mortem examination showed that the mammajian erythrocytes had 

 been dissolved. Subsequent investigation showed that the hemolytic 

 action of eel serum on the blood of mammals may be demonstrated 

 in vitro. Kossel,* Camus and Gley," and Tchistovitch * took up 

 this investigation and showed that rabbits, dogs and goats could be 

 easily immunized against eel serum and that the antitoxin thus ob- 

 tained prevented the hemolytic action of this serum in vitro, as well 

 as in vivo. 



Camus and Gley ' have shown that the blood corpuscles of some 

 animals (hedgehogs and certain birds) are not susceptible to the 

 hemolytic action of eel serum and they explain this by stating that 

 it is due to a peculiarity of the organization of the blood cells of these 

 animals. According to Ehrlich's theory, it might be said that the 

 red blood corpuscles of these animals have no receptors with which 

 the toxic substance in eel serum can combine. The venoms of the 

 cobra and other poisonous snakes have a marked hemolytic effect 

 upon the blood of mammals which can be arrested by the action of 

 specifically prepared anti-hemolytic sera. 



Halban' has made an important contribution to our knowledge of 

 both agglutinins and hemolysins, and although the agglutinins will be 

 discussed in a subsequent chapter, in order to save repetition we will 



* Annales de V InstUvt Pattenr, 1900. 



* Cmtrdthlattf. Bakteridogie, 28. 



' Archivf. Expenmufrtt. Pathologie, 25. 



* Berliner Mm. Wochenschrifi, 1898. 



^Archiv Intemat. de. Pharmaeodynamie, 3 and 4. 

 ' Annales de VInatitut Pasteur, 1899. 

 iCompt. Bend. deFAead. de Sc, 1899. 

 ' Wiener Uin. Wochemehrifi, 1900. 



