JOURNAL OF ACRIQIL1TOAL RESEARCH 
Voiv. VIII Washington, D. C., January 2, 1917 No. 1 
DIAGNOSIS OF TUBERCULOSIS BY COMPLEMENT 
FIXATION, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO 
BOVINE TUBERCULOSIS 
By A. Eichhorn, Chief , and A. Blumbkrg, Bacteriologist , 
Pathological Division, Bureau of Animal Industry , 
United States Department of Agriculture-, 1 
INTRODUCTION 
Ever since the nature of tuberculosis has been established, the diagnosis 
of the disease in living animals as well as in man has caused considerable 
difficulty. Therefore it is not at all surprising that the efforts of the 
investigators were directed to devise means by which this most destruc¬ 
tive disease could be readily and with certainty diagnosed. With the 
discovery of tuberculin a great advancement was made in this direction, 
especially with regard to its diagnostic value in animals. Nevertheless 
its shortcomings have been recognized, not because of its being unreliable 
but on account of the laboriousness of its application and the possibility 
of the so-called “doping” of the animals for the purpose of preventing a 
reaction. This practice is known to have been quite extensively, em¬ 
ployed in this country and in Germany, where the authorities were forced 
to abandon the recognition of this wonderful test on border importation 
as a result of the frequent frauds. In the search for other reliable means 
for diagnosis other allergic tests have been employed, such as the oph¬ 
thalmic, cutaneous, intradermal, and intrapalpebral tests; but while 
favorable reports have been made on these various tests by individual 
investigators, as a whole they do not come up to the reliability of the 
subcutaneous test when it is scrupulously carried out. 
The success obtained with the various biological tests for the diagnosis 
of infectious diseases directed attention toward their application in tuber¬ 
culosis. Of the different biological determinations the agglutination and 
precipitation tests held out no encouragement for success. On the other 
hand the good results obtained with the complement fixation method for 
1 The authors desire to express their appreciation to Dr. M. Dorset, Chief of the Biochemic Division of the 
Bureau of Animal Industry, who furnished the various tuberculins used in our work; to Dr. John Beichel, 
who supplied us with the bacillary emulsion, and to Drs. Hickman, Walter, and Imler, of the Bureau of 
Animal Industry, through whose courtesy we obtained the blood samples for our investigations. 
Journal of Agricultural Research, 
Washington, D. C. 
«r 
(I) 
Vol. VIII, No. 1 
Jan. 2,1917 
Key No. A—26 
