Abstract
In the work on Intraperitoneal Lysis of Tubercle Bacilli reported to this society last year by Dr. Manwaring and myself, 1 the conclusion was reached that tubercle bacilli injected in the peritoneal cavity of tuberculous guinea pigs undergo rapid destruction, due to the specific activity of peritoneal tissue cells which apparently did not depend on circulating antibody. In the experiments taken up this year, with the purpose of studying more closely the changes in the blood of tuberculous guinea-pigs, several interesting phenomena were found, to be reported in detail else-where, the main point of interest being that the subcutaneous injection of a mixture of the fresh blood of tuberculous guinea-pigs with exudate resulting from the intraperitoneal lysis of tubercle bacilli into a normal guinea-pig caused the appearance of a definite local reaction. Upon the analysis of the phenomenon, it was found that the peritoneal exudate could be replaced by a crude tuberculin, and the serum of tuberculous guinea-pigs could also be replaced by human tuberculous serum, and in this form it proved to furnish a very good method for early diagnosis of tuberculosis, the technique of which is as follows: Subcutaneous injection into a normal guinea-pig of 0.05 c.c. of a mixture of fresh tuberculous blood serum of human or animal origin (1 c.c.) with tuberculin (crude diluted—1 to 10—0.1 c.c.) left at room temperature for 2-3 hours, causes in 24 hours a local reaction similar in its aspect to a tuberculin reaction. The controls injected in similar way with the mixture of normal serum and tuberculin show no reaction. The property on which this serum skin test depends, appears in the blood of tuberculous guinea-pigs sometimes as early as the end of the first week after injection.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.