Effect of Temperatures on Formation of Hemolysins. 93 



54 («i8) 



The effect of moderately high atmospheric temperatures upon 

 the formation of hemolysins. 



By C.-E. A. Winslow, James Alexander Miller and 

 W. C. Noble. 



[From the New York State Commission on Ventilation.] 



The experiments which have been reported in regard to the 

 effect of high atmospheric temperatures upon susceptibility to 

 bacterial infections, or upon the immunity reactions in response 

 thereto, seem at first sight to be conflicting and unsatisfactory. 

 Some authors report increased resistance as a result of external 

 heat and others precisely the reverse. A more careful analysis 

 shows however that if the several factors at work in such experi- 

 ments and the various conditions employed by different investi- 

 gators be considered, the results are reasonably harmonious. A 

 moderate amount of heat may naturally be expected to produce 

 a different result from temperatures so severe as to lead to a 

 condition of fever in the experimental animals; and exposure to a 

 hot atmosphere may produce one effect on the susceptibility of 

 an animal to subsequent infection and quite another on the course 

 of an infection already established. 



The majority of investigators have been chiefly interested in the 

 effect of the condition of fever upon recovery from infection, and 

 have therefore exposed their animals to atmospheric conditions 

 sufficiently extreme materially to increase the body temperature- 

 Experiments of this kind have quite uniformly indicated that the 

 progress of an infection already established is in greater or less 

 degree checked by an artificial fever due to a very high atmospheric 

 temperature, or produced by the Sachs-Aronson operation. Such 

 experiments have been made and such a conclusion reached by 

 Rovighi, Walther, Filehne, Hildebrandt, Loewy and Richter, 

 Kast, Engelhardt, and Roily and Meltzer. In all these experi- 

 ments the high atmospheric temperatures used were 35°-4i° C. 

 and the body temperatures of the animals 40°-42°. Vincent and 



