A Specific Flocculation Reaction Occurring

The study of the antigenic properties of lipoidai substances extracted from antigenic material by alcohol, ether, or other fat solvents has included investigation of the significance of lipoidal constituents of the red blood cell in the formation of lysins and agglutinins, the action of alcoholic extracts of organs in the production of heterogenetic antibodies and their reaction with Forssman's antigen, and, finally, of the specific nature of such lipoidal fractions obtained from bacterial cells. Until recently, experimental work on the bacterial cells had been limited almost entirely to the immune reaction in tuberculosis. No at tempt is made to review the large amount of work carried out in this particular field by numerous authors, as this has lately been done by Wadsworth, Maitaner, and Maltaner (1). In their study of the complement fixation reaction in tuberculosis, they report a systematic investigation into the distribution of the antigenic properties in tubercle bacillus cultures, which they found to be associated with the acetone-insoluble lipoids. While the r61e of non-specific lipoids, extracted from various tissues, in the numerous flocculation reactions devised for the serodiagnosis of syphilis, has long been recognized, the action of bacterial lipoids in a specific flocculation reaction had not been made the subject of extensive research until 1924 when Dujarric de la Rivi~re and Roux