3Q 



Scientific Proceedings (51). 



mixtures, except when the serum and tissue fluids are tested in 

 minute quantities or greatly diluted. If tested in the full strength 

 in which they appear in the animal body, no amount of leucocytic 

 extract added to them is able to overcome or to exhaust their 

 antibactericidal power. 



Attempts to lessen the antibactericidal power of serum and 

 body fluids by neutralizing their alkalinity with boric acid, 

 acetic acid and other weak acids, are occasionally partially 

 successful. Acidulation of the non-bactericidal mixtures occa- 

 sionally restores part of their bactericidal power. In no experiment 

 thus far done however has more than a quarter of the original 

 bactericidal power been restored by this means. 



The mechanism of the antibactericidal actions of serum and 

 tissue fluids has not been determined. 



21 (717) 



On the lysis of tubercle bacilli. 



By Wilfred H. Manwaring and J. Bronfenbrenner. 



[From the Laboratories of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical 



Research.] 



It was pointed out by Koch, and has since been confirmed by 

 others, that an animal suffering from a chronic local tuberculous 

 lesion is more resistant than the normal to inoculation with 

 tubercle bacilli. 



This heightened resistance has been studied by numerous 

 workers. Calmette, for example, found that tubercle bacilli, 

 injected into the subcutaneous tissues of tuberculous cattle, soon 

 showed marked involution and degenerating forms, but that the 

 bacilli did not completely disappear from the site of the inocu- 

 lation and the neighboring lymph glands by the end of 120 days. 

 A rapid lysis or destruction of the bacilli was not observed by 

 these workers. 



Recently Beycke and Much 1 and others have applied the Pfeiffer 



1 Beycke and Much, Beitrag z. Klinik f. Tuberk., 1910, XV, p. 277. 

 Much and Leschre, ibid, 191 1, XX, p. 405. 



Kraus and Hofer, Deutsch. med. Wochenschr., 1912, XXXVIII, p. 1227; Wiener 

 klin. Wochenschr., 191 2, XXV, p. 1 112. 



