Manual of serum diagnosis / by Dr. O. Rostoski ; authorized translation by Dr. Charles Bolduan.

  • Rostoski, Otto.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Manual of serum diagnosis / by Dr. O. Rostoski ; authorized translation by Dr. Charles Bolduan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the chemical composition of these bodies, for it has not yet been possible to isolate them from the blood-serum. Ammonium sulphate precipitates the greater part of them in conjunction with those albu- minous bodies termed globulins. As shown especially by the researches of v. Behring and Ehrlich, an- titoxins possess the property of neutralizing toxins, i.e. to prevent their poisonous action on the animal organism. For example, by injecting an animal with gradually increasing doses of toxin, and so causing antibodies to be produced, it is possible finally to inject a dose of toxin which before would certainly have caused the death of the animal. But even when an antitoxic serum is mixed with toxin in a test-tube and the mixture then injected, the animal will live, whereas a similar animal injected only with the toxin will die. We now believe that the action whereby the poison is made innocuous depends on purely chemical processes and that the organism has no part therein. The bacteriolysins and the agglutinins, as already mentioned, are developed by the infected body it- self as a defense against the invasion of bacteria. The former have the property of dissolving the bacteria; the latter, of clumping them together into little masses. The bacteriolysins were discovered by Pfeiffer. The experiment by means of which they can be
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