In this letter to his former boss, Heidelberger critically reviewed experimental evidence on the use of antiserum to type III pneumococcus presented by Hugh K. Ward, an immunologist at Harvard University Medical School, in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, vol. 55 (1932). Ward had argued that type III antipneumococcus serum, after absorption with the specific carbohydrate of the pneumococcal capsule, no longer formed a precipitate with the carbohydrate, but nonetheless retained a definite, though diminished bactericidal effect on virulent pneumococci in a bactericidal test. He asserted that this carbohydrate neutralization test was a much more delicate method for detecting the anticarbohydrate antibody (precipitin) than the precipitin test, the type of test Heidelberger and Kendall had used in their quantitative studies of antibody-antigen reactions. Heidelberger charged that Ward's conclusions resulted from methodological and mathematical errors.
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