THE GORDON TEST FOR HODGKIN'S DISEASE

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Abstract
In 1932 Gordon1reported that intracerebral inoculation of rabbits and guinea pigs with suspensions of lymph nodes from patients with Hodgkin's disease was followed in several days by an encephalitic syndrome of characteristic pattern. This was typified by early muscular rigidity, progressive incoordination, ataxia and spastic paralysis of the hind limbs, accompanied by loss of weight and subnormal temperature. Tissue suspensions from patients with acute Hodgkin's disease often produced in addition to these changes retraction of the head, opisthotonos and convulsive seizures, and the animals frequently died within a few days to a month. In the less severe type of reaction the animals passed into a chronic state with marked muscular atrophy and wasting. Gordon obtained these reactions with suspensions from nineteen of twenty patients with Hodgkin's disease and with none of forty-one control suspensions. He concluded from his studies of the properties of the pathogenic agent that it