Serum therapy : bacterial therapeutics and vaccines / by R. T. Hewlett.

Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Serum therapy : bacterial therapeutics and vaccines / by R. T. Hewlett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    and does not haemolyse, but it can be rendered active again by the addition of normal guinea- pig serum, and Ehrlich and Morgenroth explain the phenomenon of haemolysis in this case as being due to the interaction of two substances, one specifically active and resistent, the immune body, and the other highly unstable, the addi- ment or complement. The phenomenon is exactly comparable to bacteriolysis. In some cases the intermediate link (im- mune body) has two affinities (fig. 10), in others three. The liimnolysins, as they are termed, seem to be specific—that is, there is a different haemolysin for every variety of ery- throcyte. The potenti- alities of bioplasm seem to be endless, and Ehrlich says that ‘ the blood-serum is the carrier of sub- stances innumerable as yet little known or conceived of.’ There are, it is true, certain difficulties to be accounted for before Ehrlich’s theory can be accepted in its entirety—for example, it is diffi- Fio. 10.—An Immune 13ouy or Connecting-link, having two Aittnities. (After Ehrlich.)