THE 



AMERICAN NATURALIST 



Vol. LV. March-April, 1921 No. 637 



IMMUNE SERA AND CERTAIN BIOLOGICAL 

 PROBLEMS^ 



PROFESSOR M. F. GUYER 

 Departmext of Zoology, Uxivekmtv (if Wi^< hxsix 



Mr. President, Members of the Jrcnh iHi/ of Mrdicliie 

 of Cincinnati: I am deeply appreciative of the honor con- 

 ferred upon me b}^ the invitation to' address this medical 

 society. Although my own researches have lain outside 

 the conventional limits of medicine, it happens that sev- 

 eral of them have crossed the border linos of this science 

 and have thereby quickened the naturally keen interest 

 in the scientific aspects of medicine that I have always 

 entertained. In my present researches, indeed, I have 

 borrowed some of my most important tools and ideas 

 from the field of immunological studies and discoveries, 

 made in the main by medical researchers. The luxuriant 

 growth of literature in recent years on immunity, anti- 

 toxins, cytotoxins, bacteriolysins, hemolysins, opsonins, 

 precipitins, agglutinins, anaphylaxis, and what not, is 

 knowTi to you all. Naturally, the brilliant series of prac- 

 tical applications of this new knowledge in diagnosis, 

 prophylaxis and therapeutics, stimulated every medical 

 investigator to redoubled effort until the field has become 

 almost exclusively the domain of the bacteriologist and 

 the pathologist. 



It may seem presumptuous of me, a biologist, to step 

 outside the traditional bounds of my science and to come, 

 carrjdng coals to Newcastle as it were, in recounting to 

 you various facts long since learned by physicians— 



1 An address delivered before the Academy of Medicine of Cincinnati. 

 97 



