A Plea for the Standardization of Reports of Agglutination Tests

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Abstract
Possibly the time has not yet arrived when it is desirable to standardize the methods employed in making the macroscopic agglutination test, although there is an increasing tendency upon the part of bacteriologists to employ the technique presented by Kolmer (1915) in which the dilutions of the serum to be tested start at 1:20 and proceed by doubling to give 1/40 1/80, 1/160, 1/320, etc. But in the manner in which tests are reported for publication there is observable a great discrepancy on the part of different authors. For the sake of comparative work it would seem to be of advantage to possess a standardized method of reporting these results, whatever the technique of making the tests may have been. A review of published results of agglutination tests indicates readily enough that the plus sign (+), for indicating a positive test, and the minus sign (-) or a zero (0), for indicating a negative result, have been commonly adopted.

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