426 
R. p. WODEHOUSE 
In computing these figures doubtful reactions were always counted 
as negative and this accounts for the small proportion (viz., 60 percent) 
of reactions obtained with whole wheat. Since it is composed of 
several different proteins this preparation would be expected to have 
proportionately more chances of producing reactions. On the other 
hand, however, being a mixture the active proteins would be diluted, 
to a large extent, by the inactive proteins and with cases with which 
the active proteins are few in number or weak in reaction this dilution 
might be sufficient to obscure, their activity almost to, or even below, 
the limit of sensibility of the skin test, thus accounting for the large 
proportion of doubtful or negative reactions of the whole wheat while 
with the same cases at the same time the individual proteins reacted 
quite strongly. 
In case No. 10 is seen a good example of this. Here "natural 
proteose" is the only one active but in the whole wheat preparation 
it does not call forth a response because its activity is obscured by the 
other four. With the case of No. 13 "natural proteose" and gliadin 
are the active parts but their activity is masked by the three other 
inactive parts. Except to Nos. i and 4 this explanation can be applied 
to all. However it is only tentative and a definite explanation must 
await further investigation. 
An even more interesting result to be observed here is that the 
"natural proteose" is the most active, producing reactions with 72 
percent of the cases while the "artificial proteose" only shows activity 
towards 36 percent. This shows that these two proteins are not im- 
munologically alike and lends support to the contention of Wells and 
Osborne (Wells and Osborne, '15) that the "natural proteose" exists 
preformed in the seed and is not formed, as is the "artificial proteose" 
by reagents used in extraction and purification. 
It is also to be seen that heating to a cooking temperature does not 
destroy the anaphylactogenic properties of wheat. However the 
heating employed in the cooking of bread somewhat reduces its ac- 
tivity in most cases. Nevertheless with some the reverse is true. In 
order to test this further a concentrated watery extract of flour was 
boiled for several hours. Another was heated in the autoclave at a 
temperature of 114° C. and a pressure of 15 pounds per square inch 
for one hour. When the coagula formed by the heat were filtered off 
and skin tests performed with the filtrates it was found that neither 
heating to a temperature of 114° C. nor prolonged boiling had reduced 
