The Nonspecificity of the Flocculative Phase of Serologic Aggregation

Some objections are offered to the Marrack-Heidelberger lattice-hypothesis which attributes the second phase of serologic aggregation to an immunochemically specific mechanism. The results of experiments on the speed of formation, and the nature of aggregates produced in mixed, antigenically independent systems are in better accord with the older conception that flocculation is a secondary and nonspecific phase of precipitative or agglutinative reactions. It appears that particles grow to visible size by the indiscriminate and nonspecific accretion of other related or unrelated, small or large, aggregates whose primary nuclei are molecules or particles of antigen coated with antibody-globulin.