The technique of Abderhalden's serum reaction / by W.E. Bullock.

  • Bullock, W.E.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The technique of Abderhalden's serum reaction / by W.E. Bullock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    3/13
    SERUM REACTION. In November of last year a series of experiments were commenced with the object of determining the value of Abderhalden’s serum reaction—dialysis method—in the diagnosis of cancer. The results obtained by following exactly Abderhalden’s technique were inconclusive, as the examples given later show. The principles of the reaction have been stated and the chief details of the dialysis method described so often that it is un- necessary here to do more tham emphasise certain points in so far as they bear upon the modifications in the method to be suggested in this paper. Ninhydrin, the reagent used to test for the decom- position products of proteins, reacts with numerous other substances, as was shown by Neuberg.1 Dextrose is the most important of these substances owing to its presence in blood serum. When 0'2 c.c. of a 1 per cent, solution of ninhydrin is boiled for a minute with a dilute solution of glucose in distilled water a transitory red colour is obtained. If normal saline be substituted for the distilled water the colour obtained is more or less permanent. The same reaction takes place with other sugars—e.g., galactose, maltose, &c. This formation of colour with sugars probably explains the various reddish shades of purple often obtained in testing dialysates in experiments with blood serum. Abderhalden’s explanation of these colours is that either the experiment has been carelessly carried out or the blood contained acids or alkalies. 1 Bioehcmischo Zcitschrift, 56, 500,1913.