Another Point of Resemblance between Anaphylactic Intoxication and Poisoning with Witte's Pepton

Kraus and Biedl ( I ) have recently called attention to the similarity which exists between the effects of anaphylactic intoxication and poisoning with Witte's pepton. In both conditions there are produced fall in blood pressure from vascular dilatation, leucopenia, and, in meat-fed dogs, loss of coagulability of the blood. Still more striking is the fact that if the Witte's pepton be injected slowly or in small doses the animal becomes immune to a subsequent injection for about twenty-four hours. W. H. Thompson (2) has shown that the portion of the pepton which acts upon the circulation is not the purified pepton (amphopepton) nor even the secondary or simpler proteoses (deuteroproteoses), but only the higher proteoses (protoand heteroproteoses) which still contain most of the proteid components (Bausteine) and maintain much of the original architecture of the proteid molecule. Rosenau and Anderson (3) and Wells (4) have shown that one injection of these proteoses does not sensitize to a subsequent injection. On the other hand, Vaughan and Wheeler (5) have been able to split the proteid molecule by boiling with 2 per cent. sodium hydrate in 95 per cent. alcohol, obtaining a toxic portion and a portion which sensitizes to subsequent injection but which is itself not specially toxic. Abderhalden and his pupils (6) have shown that after intravenous injection of horse serum, egg albumin, gliadin, casein, edestin, or gelatin into rabbits, there appears in the serum a proteolytic enzyme which splits the pepton obtained from