LIMITATIONS OF THE DIALYSIS METHOD AS A PRACTICAL TEST FOR PREGNANCY

When Abderhalden first announced that he had discovered a laboratory method of detecting pregnancy based on the fact that a pregnant woman's serum has the power of digesting human placenta in vitro, the announcement was received by the medical profession with remarkably little skepticism. One reason for its ready acceptance in good faith was the recognized high standing of Abderhalden and the vast amount of work he had done on protein metabolism. A second and more important reason was that the medical world had already been made familiar with the basic principles involved in the Abderhalden test through the work of numerous investigators during the preceding ten or fifteen years on parenteral digestion, protein sensitization, and anaphylaxis. Theobald Smith's phenomenon, Pfeiffer's phenomenon, the work of Richet and von Pirquet, and the studies of Vaughan on protein split-products, all really anticipated the discovery of serum diagnosis, just as others before Columbus