96 Report of Schimmel $ Co. April /October 1917. 



again by subsequently applying the serum. Not all kinds of animals are fit for the 

 preparation of the -antitoxin. Especially horses, which distinguished themselves from 

 the very outset by a certain sensitiveness towards poison, and certain rabbits supplied 

 antisera of high value, whereas goats were generally indifferent to the pollen toxin 

 and unfit to produce antitoxin. Appropriate horses, on subcutaneous injection of the 

 extract of from 0,5 to 1 gram of rye pollen, partly showed tremendous swellings of 

 from V 2 to Z U m - diameter, high fever and serious general disturbances, partly less 

 pronounced symptoms. On continuing the treatment with increased doses, no rise 

 of sensitiveness was to be noticed, however; on the contrary, the animals got more 

 and more accustomed to the poison and were finally able to stand 20 to 30 times the 

 original dosis without any difficulty. 



The serum from sufficiently immunized animals has poison-binding qualities. In 

 opposition to Magnus and Friedenthal, Dunbar was unable to prove the presence of 

 precipitating antisubstances, but binding antisubstances, which in some rabbit sera 

 suppressed the hemolysis even in pollen toxin diluted in the proportion of 1:50000. 



A method worked out by Dunbar and Prausnitz permits of ascertaining the neutrali- 

 zing effect of the serum on known quantities of toxin in the eye of the hay-fever 

 patient. The Pollantin sold by us is 40- to 50-valent, on an average. The treatment 

 of horses with Kammann's new protein enables one to arrive at a 60- to 80-, even at 

 a 100-fold valency. The sera against the American fall fever are made and examined 

 in a similar way. 



As to the nature of the hay-fever toxin and the antitoxin, the opinions are divided 

 even now. 



Prausnitz succeeded in proving that, with increasing doses of rye-pollen toxin, 

 the quantity of serum required for neutralization does not rise in constant proportion, 

 but more quickly, so that the binding of toxin and antitoxin does not follow the law 

 of the multiple proportions. At first, Prausnitz tried to explain this by a small avidity 

 of the horse antiserum. On the other hand, Weichardt and Wolff-Eisner supposed that 

 the hay-fever poison was not a true toxin, but an endotoxin, and the antiserum not 

 an antitoxin, but a cytolytic amboceptor. Accordingly, the specific serum, in the 

 presence of a suitable complement, would free the poison from the pollen and, in 

 consequence, cause no relief of the hay-fever attack, but a change for the worse. 

 Weichardt explains hay-fever as an illness caused by endotoxins, which are formed 

 on pollen albumen being split up by cytolysins. Later on, he further developed this 

 view in the sense of modern investigation of anaphylaxis, considering hay-fever to 

 be a cellular epithelial anaphylaxis. Then, the hay-fever poison would be no preformed 

 toxin, but would be formed by parenteral digestion of the primarily innocent pollen 

 albumens in, or close to, the mucous cells of the conjunctiva and the respiratory tract 

 of the hay-fever patient. The ineffectiveness of pollen toxin on the mucous membranes 

 of healthy persons would then be explained by the absence of permeability for the 

 noxious components, so that there was no possibility of parenteral cellular action. 



Wolff-Eisner likewise takes hay-fever to be a supersensitiveness towards albumens 

 and supposes that the serum of hay-fever patients contains substances which, through 

 an endolytic process, set free the poisonous components of the pollen albumen. In 

 accordance with Weichardt, he designates Pollantin, obtained from animals through 

 injecting pollen, as a cytolytic serum which, in the presence of the required component, 

 sets free the endotoxins, thus increasing the action of the poison. The uncontested 

 successes of Pollantin were to be explained by the presence of bodies in the serum 

 which hinder the reactions, the so-called "colloidal checking substances", i. e. suppress 



