III. Agar Anaphylatoxin: Rabbit Serum

Abstract

Bordet1 stated that diverse fresh sera behave like that of the guineapig on contact with agar. It is to be presumed that this statement includes rabbit serum, but of that there is no certainty. Tchernoroutzky2 specifically stated that the sera of rabbit, horse, and man, when treated with agar, become about as toxic as the serum of adult guineapigs (2 to 3 c.c. per 100 gm.). On the other hand, Haren3 reached the conclusion, based on insufficient data, that agar anaphylatoxin is toxic only for the homologous animal. In his tests he employed treated rabbit serum, which in dose of 2 to 3 c.c. produced no effect in guineapigs. It will be shown that his deductions were wrong. There is no doubt but that rabbit serum, in general, is more difficult to toxify than is that of the guinea-pig. The least difficult in that respect is rat serum. The work with rabbit serum was included in this study for the reason that it is possible to obtain a large amount with the least outlay of time and expense. This fact to a large extent counterbalanced the difficulty or slowness in producing anaphylatoxin. In a good portion of this work, the sera of fasting rabbits (2 to 24 hours) were employed in the belief that fasting gave a more uniform serum and made it more toxifiable. A brief fast for a few hours seemed to be better than one of a day or more. But even under these conditions, great variation in the ease or intensity of poison-production