RECENT ADVANCES IN SCIENCE 4 49 



ORGANIC CHEMISTRY. By P. Haas, D.Sc, Ph.D., St. Mary's 

 Hospital Medical School. 



In a recent number of the Comptes rendus (191 5, 161, 150) 

 H. D. Dakin describes the preparation of a hypochlorite solution 

 suitable for the treatment of wounds ; it is prepared by slaking 

 200 grams of bleaching powder with a solution of 140 grams of 

 sodium carbonate in 10 litres of water, syphoning off the super- 

 natant solution after half an hour and filtering through cotton 

 wool ; boric acid is then added until the solution is just neutral 

 or faintly acid to phenolphthalein. Such a solution can be 

 employed for the irrigation of wounds for several days without 

 much irritation of the skin, since it contains no free alkali or 

 chloric and it has the advantage of dissolving necrosed tissue 

 as well as being a powerful antiseptic. The author has also 

 prepared and tested a number of organic chloro-amides with a 

 view to their possible employment for the same purpose, and 

 has found that the sodium salts of benzene and toluene sulphonyl 

 chloro-amides C 6 H 5 S0 2 NClNa and CH 3 C 6 H 4 S0 2 NClNa are strong 

 antiseptics, and being only slightly toxic they can be employed 

 in stronger solution than hypochlorites, but they exert a power- 

 ful haemolytic action and moreover do not dissolve necrosed 

 tissue. 



An interesting series of papers on the chemistry of the 

 interaction between toxins and antitoxins is contributed to the 

 Journal of the Russian Physical and Chemical Society (191 5, 47, 

 263, 301, 307 and 313) by I. I. Ostromisslenski. According to 

 this author toxins are colloidal substances of high molecular 

 weight and slightly basic character. Although toxic themselves, 

 they form salts which are not poisonous, in which respect they 

 differ from the alkaloids and other crystalline poisons whose 

 toxic properties are not destroyed by salt formation. 



Antitoxins are globulins whose specific properties are due 

 solely to their physical condition such as the size, mass, surface 

 or electrical condition of their colloidal particles. The inter- 

 action between a toxin and an antitoxin takes place in three 

 stages : (1) the mutual physical adsorption of the two sub- 

 stances without loss of toxic properties, (2) the chemical 

 neutralisation of the feebly basic toxin by the weak acid anti- 

 toxin with the formation of a non-toxic salt which can be 

 decomposed by either acid or alkali, and (3) a further chemical 

 change of an intramolecular nature or possibly brought about 



