42 
BACTERIOLOGY. 
Anaphy¬ 
laxis 
applied in the diagnosis of disease. Perhaps the one 
most used is the Wassermann test for syphilis. The 
object of the test is to determine whether a patient’s 
blood serum contains the specific immune substance or 
amboceptor of syphilis. 
The antigen may be an emulsion of treponema 
pallidum or an extract of syphilitic liver. The ambo¬ 
ceptor or immune substance of syphilis may or may not 
be present in the patient’s blood serum. For comple¬ 
ment the blood serum of guinea-pigs is used. If these 
three substances, the antigen, the patient’s serum and 
the complement are mixed in the proper proportions, 
the complement will be fixed if the patient has syphilis. 
If the patient is not infected with syphilis the com¬ 
plement is still free and unfixed. 
To determine this, sheep’s corpuscles and the 
serum of a rabbit immunized to sheep’s corpuscles is 
added after the complement that is always present has 
been destroyed by heat. If the complement is used up 
then no hemolysis of the sheep’s corpuscles will take 
place and the test is said to be positive, if it is not it 
will join with the rabbit serum amboceptor and dis¬ 
solve the corpuscles and the test is negative. 
The word anaphylaxis, literally translated from 
the Greek, means against protection, the exact opposite 
of prophylaxis, which means for protection. This 
name has been given to a condition of hypersensitive¬ 
ness which has been found to exist in certain animals 
and man. For example, it has been shown that guinea- 
pigs may be made sensitive to harmless proteids like 
