Studies in immunity / by Jules Bordet et al.

  • Jules Bordet
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Studies in immunity / by Jules Bordet et al. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    fluid increases the attracting power of the modified vibrio Metch- nikovi and renders it quite as energetic as the normal organism. We may then put aside the hypothesis that the modified vibrio has lost a part of its attracting properties owing to a smaller amount of positive chemiotactic substance. There is evidently a negative chemiotactic influence which lessens to a considerable degree the effect of the attractive substances. Experiment shows us that dilution weakens the activity of the first more than that of the second. There is nothing to prove that these substances, acting in an opposite manner on white corpuscles, are distinct. It may be that there are not two different chemical substances, but that one and the same substance may attract leucocytes when diluted and repel them when concentrated. This last hypothesis is far from difficult to accept: we know, indeed, the profound influence which the con- centration of various substances has on their power to affect sus- ceptible cells. This is not a supposition, however, that we have been able to prove. Whatever the substance may be to which the repelling action is due, it is present and acts energetically in the modified vibrio, but it is also manifest to a less degree in the ordinary organism. As a matter of fact, the attracting power of the secretions of this latter organism increases with dilution, as demonstrated by a capillary tube experiment. The vibrio that has been grown in an immunized guinea-pig does not long retain its intense repelling property when grown on arti- ficial media. Experiment 4. A comparison was made as regards chemio- taxis, by the same method of capillary tubes, between the vibrio Metchnikovi cultivated for a long time on agar tubes and a vibrio marked very virulent that had been transplanted every four days for nearly half a month in veal bouillon containing 1 per cent peptone. The leucocytes filled equal lengths of the tubes of each strain. We have seen that residence in the body of a vaccinated animal lends certain modifications to the vibrio Metchnikovi; it becomes more toxic and less attracting for leucocytes. Let us now consider how these modifications are produced.
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