SCIENTIFIC PROCEEDINGS. 



Abstracts of the Communications. 

 Thirty sixth meeting. 



The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. December 15, 

 ipop. President Lee in the chair. 



14 (424) 



The value of the conglutination reaction as a means of 

 diagnosis of acute bacterial infections. 



By FREDERICK P. GAY and WILLIAM P. LUCAS. 



\From the Harvard Medical School. ] 

 In connection with the work on the relation of sensitizers to the 

 alexin in 1906, Bordet and Gay described the presence in bovine 

 serum of a substance to which the name of " colloid " was given. 

 This colloidal substance had the property of producing a character- 

 istic clumping of red blood cells and of accelerating their lysis 

 when they had been treated with both a sensitizer and an alexin ; 

 its action was possible under no other circumstance. To this sub- 

 stance the name of " conglutinin " was subsequently given by 

 Bordet and Streng, perhaps somewhat inadvisedly as the term had 

 been used to describe the agglutination of blood cells by ricin. 

 At about the same time a probably similar substance was described 

 in goat serum by Manwaring to which the name of " auxilysin " 

 was given, but the description of its mode of action has remained 

 insufficient for identifying it with the colloidal substance of Bordet 

 and Gay. In 1908 Streng was able to reproduce the phenomenon 

 of conglutination in bacteria that had been treated with a specific 

 sensitizer and an alexin, on the addition of bovine serum from which 

 the normal agglutinins had been removed, if such were present. 

 He further suggests the possible use of this reaction in the diag- 

 nosis of infections such as typhoid fever, in which case the blood 

 of the patient would serve as the sensitizing serum. 



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