io8 



Scientific Proceedings (52). 



and infants in conjunction with a large variety of antigens with 

 the following results. The unheated mothers' sera invariably 

 contained antibodies capable of causing a well-marked deviation 

 of the complement when used in conjunction with an antigen 

 obtained by extracting human blood clots with alcohol. The 

 unheated infants' sera tested under the same conditions invariably 

 showed completely negative results. A large variety of alcoholic 

 extracts of tissues used as antigens gave similar although some- 

 what less marked deviation with unheated mothers' sera and 

 absolutely negative results with unheated infants' sera. The 

 deviating body concerned in this reaction is destroyed by heating 

 for 3^ hour at 58 0 C. The mother's sera tested after heating were 

 negative to the antigens enumerated above, and those of the 

 infants either negative or very slightly positive, but exhibiting 

 on the whole a somewhat greater capacity to deviate than that 

 possessed by the heated mothers' sera. The deviating capacity 

 of unheated mothers' serum varies greatly, certain cases exhibiting 

 a complete deviation only when employed in concentrations as 

 high as .05 to .075 c.c. of serum, others giving a complete deviation 

 when amounts as small as .001 c.c. of serum were employed. It 

 is important to note that the antibodies in question occasionally 

 fail to make their appearance until after the serum has been 

 frozen for two or three days as indicated above. Similar non- 

 specific immune bodies destroyed by heating at 58 0 C. have been 

 observed in cancer and other pathological conditions, 1 and to a 

 certain extent in supposedly normal individuals. The entire 

 absence of these bodies in the blood of newborn infants and their 

 invariable occurrence in the blood of pregnant women at term 

 indicates that in this case at least they probably bear some relation 

 to the reaction of the body against detached fetal cells or proteid 

 or enzymatic bodies of fetal origin. The occurrence of this re- 

 action to a marked extent in cancer, particularly in those cases 

 in which tumors are absorbing under treatment, lends further 

 support to this point of view. 



1 Clowes, Zeitschrift f. Krebsforschung, 1912, Vol. XII, page 421. 



