Studies on bacterial anaphylaxis and infection

Abstract

We have attempted in the preceding experiments the beginning of an analysis of bacterial anaphylaxis and its relation to the occurrences in the animal body during an infectious disease. We have shown that the sensitization of the tissues of guinea pigs, as indicated by the isolated uterus, required 3 to 5 days even when passive sensitization was employed, and that in these relations conditions with bacterial sensitization were entirely analogous to those revealed for serum anaphylaxis by Dale and Well especially. It has become apparent that the sensitized uterus reacted not at all with whole bacteria or whole red cells, or, in other words, that before reaction with sensitized organs could occur an extraction or solution of the bacterial cell must take place. That bacteria yield some of their substance to the circulating blood during the course of infection was to be expected, but it has been definitely indicated, we think, by our complement fixations. The mechanism of injury in the sensitized animal or in the human being so far along in typhoid fever that antibodies have begun to develop is in part one in which antigen, derived from the bacilli and brought into solution, or rather suspension, in the blood stream, reacts with antibodies which are from the beginning, or have subsequently become, integral parts of the cell protoplasm, the entire process taking place within the cell. This last point is indicated by the failure to sensitize by simply soaking the normal uterus in antiserum. © 1917, Rockefeller University Press., All rights reserved.