OBSERVATIONS ON THE WASSERMANN REACTION : A COMPARISON OF THE NEW SYSTEM OF NOGUCHI WITH THAT USING CHOLESTEROLIZED ANTIGEN ACCORDING TO MCINTOSH AND FILDES.
The Wassermann reaction carried out according to the method of McIntosh and Fildes, with cholesterolized antigen and with certain allowances for the presence of native anti-sheep amboceptor; leads to about the same result as when it is done according to the recent proposal of Noguchi, with the native human complement and acetone-insoluble lipoids as antigen. The differences are such as to suggest that from the point of view of diagnosis the Noguchi method is the more conservative but that there is definite advantage in using two metnods as distinct in origin of materials as these, partly for the purpose of control and partly in the hope of acquiring new information of importance. As a measure of control of treatment the cholesterol antigen appears to us to be the more valuable. The Wassermann reaction alone, by whatever method it may be done, can only be used in the diagnosis of syphilis in conjunction with presumption based on other grounds. That it fails to appear in a considerable percentage of syphilitics is well known. That the reaction is positive in other conditions is not so generally recognized. Fresh instances of this in certain febrile cases are here recorded.
Henry Phipps Institute of the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia.
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