A Method for Determining the Chill-Producing Properties of Anti-Pneumococcic Serum. ∗

Abstract

Following the intravenous injection of concentrated, anti-pneumococcus horse serum, there frequently occurs a systemic reaction of varying intensity. The reaction comes on usually in from 30 to 60 minutes after the injection, and begins almost always with a chill, which is accompanied and followed by an elevation of temperature.

It seems that this reaction is not an essential factor in the beneficial effects of the serum, indeed it is considered by many to be a distinct disadvantage and to be responsible for some limitation of a more general employment of the serum therapy. Unfortunately there has been no method devised to determine, in advance of its use, whether the serum to be employed contains chill-producing properties, and so this knowledge is obtained only after the occurrence of the reaction in a treated patient. The present communication is a report of a successful imitation of the reaction in dogs, thus affording a method of determining before its clinical employment, the presence or absence of the chill-producing factor in any given sample of serum.

In the first experiments, it was found that a serum which had produced a typical reaction in a patient, produced a corresponding reaction when injected into the jugular vein of a dog. On the other hand, a serum which had failed to give a reaction in a patient, also failed to give one in a dog. Following these initial experiments, a considerable number of serums, which had been or subsequently were used in the pneumonia wards at Harlem Hospital, were tested. The experimental results were in striking agreement with the clinical ones.

The procedure in the animal test is as follows: The dogs selected are of the short-haired variety, of a weight between 5 and 10 kilos; the temperature is taken by rectum before and at 20 minute intervals after the serum injection; the thermometer is inserted the same distance for each reading; the serum is injected into the jugular vein, no local anesthesia or operative exposure being necessary.