Summary
Of 20 rabbits that received two injections of fowl corpuscles at an interval of five days, all were found to be maximally sensitive upon the intravenous test injection seven days after the second sensitizing injection.
All of the sera of these sensitized rabbits agglutinated the corpuscles used for injection and the agglutinins were only slightly reduced by mixing the serum with relatively large quantities of the water-soluble corpuscular substances.
Rabbits sensitized with two injections of whole fowl corpuscles are not necessarily sensitive to the water-soluble corpuscular substances, and are not desensitized by large quantities of the latter to the subsequent injection of whole corpuscles.
Antisera prepared against goose corpuscles (which are said to lack the Forssman antigen) are toxic for normal guinea pigs; this toxicity can be removed by absorption with guinea pig kidney.
Anti-goose corpuscle serum rendered non-toxic by absorption with guinea pig kidney tissue and injected intravenously into normal guinea pigs renders these animals hypersusceptible to the injection of whole goose corpuscles one hour later.
The subcutaneous reinjection of fowl corpuscles almost always results in the development of the Arthus necrosis.
Footnotes
Almost all of the previous published studies of corpuscle anaphylaxis have been conducted in guinea pigs and with the use of mammalian red cells; moreover, the results of those studies are not directly applicable to the special questions with which the present study is concerned.
For the literature of corpuscle anaphylaxis, the reader is referred to the following papers: G. Fischer: Ztschr. f. Hygiene, etc., 1924, 103, 659; H. Friedli und H. Homma: Ztschr. f. Hyg., 1925, 104, 67; H. Friedli: Ztschr. f. Hyg., 1925, 104, 233; Julian H. Lewis: Ztschr. f. Hyg., 1928, 108, 336.
