The Analytical Methods of Serum Pathology.’

As part of work testing the application of physical chemistry to immunity, measurements were made of the amount of amboceptor present in heated, hemolytic serum,after contact with corpuscles, the object being to determine in this way the law governing the absorption of hemolytic amboceptor. The unexpected phenomenon was observed that when serum and corpuscles 2 were put together in certain proportions, subsequent analysis occasionally showed what was apparently more amboceptor than originally present, in spite of the fact that amboceptor had been removed from the liquid by absorption by the corpuscles. This paradoxical result indicates, either that the interaction of amboceptor and corpuscles is a much more complex phenomenon than heretofore supposed, or that the method of analysis is wrong. The analysis was performed by the method commonly used in such experiments. Accurately measured quantities of the liquid to be analyzed were allowed to act on corpuscles in the presence of a constant amount of complement, and the resulting hemolysis compared with hemolysis by known amounts of amboceptor, acting under identical conditions. The hemolysis, by the known quantities of amboceptor, was plotted as a curve (AN, Fig. I,) showing the relation between and amount of hemolysis amount of amboceptor, and the hemolysis by known volumes of the liquid to be analyzed compared directly with readings on this curve.