SCIENTIFIC PROCEEDINGS. 



Abstracts of Communications. 



Sixty-second meeting. 



New York Post-Graduate Medical School. President Lusk in the 



chair. 



21 (953) 



Serological analysis of a case of serum sickness in a human being. 



By Richard Weil. 



[From the Department of Experimental Therapeutics, Cornell 

 Medical College.] 



A case of meningococcus meningitis received 95 cubic centi- 

 meters of therapeutic serum derived from an immunized horse, 

 intraspinally. On the eighth day, the patient developed serum 

 sickness, characterized by fever and a rash. These symptoms 

 lasted one week. On the day following the subsidence of the 

 serum sickness, blood was taken from this patient. This blood 

 was shown to contain both antibody to horse serum, and remnants 

 of horse serum itself, by the following procedures: 



(a) Antibody to horse serum was demonstrated through the 

 fact that the patient's serum passively sensitized guinea-pigs 

 against horse serum, in amounts of 0.15 c.c. 



(b) Horse serum was demonstrated through the fact that the 

 patient's serum produced a sharp anaphylactic response in guinea- 

 pigs passively sensitized against horse serum by the previous 

 injection of the serum of a rabbit immunized against horse serum. 

 This result is not produced by control human sera. 



A second aspiration of this patient's blood made after the lapse 

 of another week failed to demonstrate the presence of antibody; 

 and of horse serum in very small amounts. 



37 



