ABSTRACT
Throughout the ages man has been fascinated and, at times, obsessed by the marvelous, mysterious, and even baffling qualities of the blood. In 1889, Hans Buchner described a heat-labile bactericidal principle in the blood which was later identified as the complement system. In 1894, Jules Bordet working at the Pasteur Institute in Metchnikoff’s laboratory discovered that the lytic or bactericidal action of freshly drawn blood, which has been destroyed by heating, was promptly restored by the addition of fresh, normal, unheated serum. Paul Ehrlich called Bordet’s alexine “das Komplement.” In 1901, Bordet and Gengou developed the complement fixation test to measure antigen-antibody reactions. Ferrata, in 1907, recognized complement to be a multiple component system, a complex of protein substances of mixed globulin composition present in normal sera of many animal species.
