The Agglutinating Properties of Exudates from Patients with Rheumatic Fever

Recent reports (1, 2, 3) that serum from febrile patients and exudates from tuberculous pleurae exert an apparently non-specific agglutinating effect upon certain gram-positive cocci have prompted the publication of similar results concerning the properties of exudates obtained from patients suffering from various acute manifestations of rheumatic fever. During the course of a search for agglutinins and precipitins in the body fluids of such patients, it was observed that exudate obtained from the knee during the course of an acute arthritis possessed a marked capacity to cause flocculent growth (thread reaction) of a certain strain of Streptococcus haemalyticus. This strain, " S43 matt avirulent," had been kept in the laboratory for many years upon artificial media. So striking was this effect, noted at times even in a dilution of 1: 10,000 of the exudate, that it seemed desirable to extend the observations to other organisms, as well as to include exudates from conditions other than rheumatic fever.