SERUM PROTEINS IN BULLS HEALTHY, RINDERPEST ATTACKED AND RECOVERED 41
but he believes that there may be some intimate relation between the amount of
antitoxin developed and the quantity of the globulins. A similar observation was
made by Gibson and Banzhaf [ 1910 ], who noticed a significant rise in the " saturated
sodium chloride precipitated serum globulin " of horses after immunisation against
diphtheria toxin along with a rapid rise in the total serum globulin, but subse-
quently there was a sharp fall in the former fraction, and this decrease remained
far below the normal, and tended to vary inversely with the total serum-globulin
content. The variations in the content of serum-albumin were found to be similar
to those observed by Atkinson and Ledingham (loc. cit.) before, and the serum-
albumin decreased to a minimum just after the time of the serum-globulin and
antitoxic maximum, but it tended to return to the higher level when the horse
had been in use for several months as an antitoxin producer. The changes in the
fibrinogen were often sudden and there was no apparent association with antitoxic
potency, or serum globulin content. The question of a globulin rise in infection
and immunity has recently been subjected to much study by various workers such
as Schmidt and Schmidt [ 1917 ], Mayer, Hurwitz and Taussig [1918], Reyman
[ 1924 ], and Kund-C. Berthelsen [ 1931 ], and these authors have come to the con-
clusion that there is no parallelism between the rise and the antitoxin content. A
study of serum-protein changes of human beings in normal and pathological con-
ditions has been made by several workers. Thus Rowe [ 1916] examining the
serum proteins of human beings in various diseases by Robertson's micro-refrac-
tometric method found that muscular activity, even of the simplest sort, increased
total serum proteins; this increase occurring more in the albumin than in the
globulin fraction. In syphilis, pneumonia, and chronic nephritis, a rise in globulin
was observed, while a decrease or normal value of the total proteins was obtained
in several diseases such as pneumonia, chronic nephritis with oedema, etc. An
excellent review of the literature on the function of plasma proteins up to 1925
has been given by Howe [ 1925 ]. In some recent papers to which reference has
already been made, Lloyd, Napier and Paul (loc. cit.) have tried to give a serologi-
cal diagnosis of kalazar, malaria, and typhoid on the basis of a variation in
the amount of the different serum protein fractions, and have shown that in some
of these diseases there is a rapid rise in the serum globulin fraction in the course of
infection. This rise is more or less due to the increase in the euglobulin fraction
on which the diagnostic ' formolgel ' reaction of kalazar is supposed to depend. In
some cases the total protein content of the serum is also found to increase. It is
interesting to note in this connection that in Hartley's experiments with, bulls which
died ultimately from an attack of rinderpest, no rise in the globulin fraction was
noticed, but on the contrary there was a gradual fall. These results are thus just
the reverse of what is found in the case of some human diseases. This fact may be