Demonstration of an “Anaphylactic Poison”

Abstract

That the liver is practically indispensable for the development of anaphylactic shock in the dog has been indicated, principally by Manwaring and his colleagues, 1 Voegtlin and Bernheim, 2 and Simonds and Brandes. 3 Manwaring, 4 in addition, has reported that during anaphylactic shock in the dog, physiologically active substances, called by him “hepatic anaphylatoxins,” appear in the circulating blood so that by appropriate cross circulation experiments their presence can be demonstrated by the effects they produce in the recipient animal. A number of considerations led us to suspect that if transportable physiologically active substances are set free during anaphylactic shock in the dog, they might appear in the thoracic duct lymph. Petersen and Levinson 5 have noted the marked increase in the rate of flow of the thoracic duct lymph during shock. That this increase in flow is secondary to the shock phenomena occurring in the liver is indicated by the work of Simonds and Brandes, 6 who reproduced similar effects by mechanical obstruction of the hepatic veins. The points of similarity between the manifestations of anaphylactic shock and mechanical obstruction of the hepatic veins in the dog have been studied in considerable detail by Simonds and Brandes, and warrant the conclusion that a considerable proportion of the increased lymph flow occurring during shock is of hepatic origin. If this is the case, it would seem possible that substances such as the hepatic anaphylatoxins of Manwaring might appear in the lymph.

As one of the most delicate methods of testing for the presence of certain smooth muscle stimulating substances, the isolated surviving strip of guinea pig intestine was used.