Page:Defensive Ferments of the Animal Organism (3rd edition).djvu/87

 point of attack from which to initiate their decomposition.

Some examples which, in the form of curves, represent the results obtained from the disintegration of mixtures of plasma, or serum, with some substrate (albumen or peptone), may serve to illustrate the above statements.

(1) A dog, whose serum did not decompose peptones, was given 0.5 gr. of casein by means of a subcutaneous injection on November 25 and 29 and December 4. The blood used in the experiment below was withdrawn on December 6. The polariscope tube was filled with a mixture of 0.5 c.c. of serum, 0.5 c.c. of silk-peptone solution (10 per cent.), and 7 c.c. of normal salt solution (see fig. 1).

. 1.

(2) A dog was given repeated subcutaneous injections of crystallized albumen obtained from seeds of the gourd. The last injection was made on December 8, 8 gr. of albumen being injected. The serum was examined on the following day. For this experiment 1 c.c. of serum was mixed with 0.5 c.c.