THE COBRA VENOM HEMOLYSIS TEST IN SYPHILIS, WITH REPORT OF ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY REACTIONS

HISTORICAL  Much of the early work on cobra venom hemolysis was done by Calmette,¹ Stephens,²,³ Myers,²,⁴ Mitchell and Flexner,⁵ Flexner and Noguchi,⁶ Kyes,⁸,⁹ Sachs,⁹,¹⁰ Abderhalden and LeCount,¹¹ and Goebel.¹² Additional papers by Noguchi,⁷ von Dungern and Coca,¹³ Bang¹⁴ and Weil¹⁵ have, within the past five years, created new interest in the subject. From the work of Kyes it has been shown that the incomplete hemolysin present in native cobra venom (amboceptor, as first suggested by Flexner and Noguchi) is activated, in the absence of serum, by complementing substances (lecithin) present in the red cells to form the complete hemolysin, called by him "cobra-lecithid."According to Hober16 lecithin, with a small amount of cholesterin, is said to form 33 per cent, of the solid ingredients of red cells. Sachs has suggested that the hemolytic resistance of red cells, from different individuals of the same species, varied according to the