In 1895 Bordet made his discovery that thebacteriolytic effect of acquired specificantibody is significantly enhancedin vivo by the presence of innate serum components which he termed alexine (but which are now known ascomplement). Four years later, in 1899, he described a similar destructive process involving complement, "hemolysis", in which foreign red blood cells are ruptured or "lysed" following exposure to immune serum. In 1900, he left Paris to found an institute in Brussels like Pasteur's, and continued to work extensively on the mechanisms involved in the action of complement. These studies became the basis for complement-fixation testing methods that enabled the development of serological tests forsyphilis (specifically, the development of theWassermann test byAugust von Wassermann). The same technique is used today in serologic testing for countless other diseases.
In March 1916, he was elected a Foreign Member of theRoyal Society[2] and in 1930, delivered theirCroonian Lecture.[3] In this lecture, Bordet also concluded thatbacteriophages, the bacteria-killing "invisible viruses" discovered byFelix d'Herelle did not exist and that bacteria destroyed themselves using a process of autolysis. This theory collapsed in 1941 with the publication by Ruska of the first electron microscope pictures of bacteriophages.[4]TheNobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to him in 1919 for his discoveries relating to immunity.[citation needed]
