Electric Charges Carried by the Hemolysins

Field and Teague 1 have recently shown that toxins and antitoxins under the influence of the electric current migrate toward the cathode, and in a second series of experiments they found that the agglutinins of typhoid immune serum also travel toward the cathode. With hemolysins the conditions are somewhat more complicated than with toxins or agglutinins owing to the presence of two factors, amboceptor and complement, being necessary to complete the hemolytic system. It has been shown by Lillie 2 and Henri 3 that red corpuscles migrate toward the anode in an electric current. Provided, therefore, that neutralization of electric charges is a factor in the combinations necessary to effect hemolysis, one would suppose that the immune bodies should travel towards the cathode and the complement toward the anode. We have indeed determined that hemolytic immune bodies migrate in the direction of the cathode, but our experiments indicate very strongly that complement also travels in the same direction. The immune serums were procured by inoculation into rabbits, of ox and horse corpuscles, washed free of serum, and suspended in an equivalent amount of salt solution, the blood being drawn from the ear or the carotid after intraperitoneal injection of thirty to forty cubic centimeters of the corpuscles in individual doses of five to six cubic centimeters. The immune serums are designated as rabbit v. horse and rabbit v. ox. For complement fresh normal rabbit serum has been used throughout. The accompanying tables refer, some to rabbit v. horse, and some to rabbit v. ox sermn, but