This investigation was undertaken for the purpose of discovering a possible relationship between cholesteremia and the Wassermann reaction. We believe that our results demonstrate conclusively that the strength of the Wassermann reaction is independent of the cholesterol content of a serum.
This problem is of special interest since the introduction of cholesterolized antigen in the Wassermann technic. For a long time it has been thought that the antibody-like substance occurring in serum and spinal fluid yielding positive Wassermann reactions was related to the lipoids of the blood, and results obtained with cholesterol fortified antigen have strengthened this impression. Nevertheless, there is no real evidence to justify this belief, and more and more data are accumulating to indicate that the complement-fixing bodies in the Wassermann reaction are related to serum globulin1 rather than to lipoids in the serum.
Henes2 is the strongest advocate of the theory that there is