Serums, vaccines and toxines in treatment and diagnosis / by Wm. Cecil Bosanquet ... and John W.H. Eyre.

  • Bosanquet, W. Cecil (William Cecil), 1866-1941.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Serums, vaccines and toxines in treatment and diagnosis / by Wm. Cecil Bosanquet ... and John W.H. Eyre. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    21/378 (page 11)
    but there is as yet little definite evidence of the existence of such substances (autolysins).1 Cytolysis.—It is found that similar antibodies are produced by the injection, not only of bacteria and blood- corpuscles, but of many other kinds of cells, as, for instance, spermatozoa, nerve-cells, leucocytes, liver-cells, gastric epithelium,3 &c. Serum from an animal thus injected with spermatozoa derived from another species is found to contain a substance (cylolysin) capable of destroying the spermatozoa existing within the living body of an individual of the latter species. The question of the possibility of preparing a serum which should be capable of destroying the cells of a tumour, e.g. a cancer, without affecting the normal epithelium, is of considerable interest in relation to the treatment of such disease (see p. 347). Precipitation.—Very closely allied to this formation of cytolysins, or substances which are capable of dissolving cells, is the appearance of materials which act in a peculiar way on the soluble albuminous substances contained in serum itself. These are called precipiti?is, and are formed when the serum of one kind of animal is injected into the body of another species.3 Thus, if the serum of, say, a horse is injected into a goat, the serum of the latter acquires the property of forming a precipitate with normal horse's serum. It appears that the precipitate is formed at the expense of the immune '' serum (i.e. that of the animal 1 Eason finds that paroxysmal hemoglobinuria is due to the action of a hemolytic copula and complement, which are present in the blood of patients suffering from the disease and which unite with the corpuscles under the influence of cold (Scut. Med. and Surg. Journ., May, 1906). - Bolton, Trans. Path. Soc, lvil, 1906, p. 297. '■' The serum of animals treated by injection of the blood of another species possesses, in addition to its destructive action, a power of agglutinating the blood-corpuscles of the latter, i.e. causing them to adhere together. This property is not lost on heating the serum to 55° C. H. Marx and Ehrnrooth find that human corpuscles are agglutinated by the serum of any other animal, and suggest the use of this property as a medico-legal test (Mii/ich. med. TJ'och., Feb. 16, 1904, p. 293).