66 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



The study of the action of dead bacteria in the living 

 body 1 has led to the belief that dead tubercle bacilli may 

 themselves contain a toxine, and these bacilli, if intro- 

 duced directly into a vein, produce a train of symptoms 

 culminating in death. The autopsy shows that various 

 organs, and especially the lungs, are permeated with 

 minute granulations, composed of epithelioid cells, con- 

 taining tubercle bacilli ; the extent to which the organs 

 are involved depends exclusively upon the quantity of 

 dead bacilli which have been inoculated. From ex- 

 periments of this nature it has been concluded that dead 

 tubercle bacilli contain a substance which produces a 

 necrotuberculosis characterised by lesions similar to those 

 caused by living bacilli. A study of the histo-genesis of 

 tuberculous processes has, however, shown that granula- 

 tion-nodules, containing epithelioid and giant cells, are not 

 specific pathological formations induced by either living or 

 dead bacilli, but that indifferent foreign bodies can produce 

 these changes. 2 The affection produced by dead bacilli 

 is, therefore, not a genuine tuberculosis, but a disease in 

 which nodules, resembling those produced by living bacilli, 

 are disseminated through organs. 



It is, however, possible that a poison or the ante- 

 cedent of this may exist, as is the case with enzymes or 

 zymogens within the cell, and this may result from the 

 synthetic activity of protoplasm. It is well known that 

 completely attenuated cultures form no specific toxine, 

 though, according to Buchner 3 and his colleagues, certain 

 proteines derived from the plasmatic contents of the 

 bacterial cell pass into culture media which have sup- 

 ported a virulent growth. These proteines have the 

 power of producing acute leucocytosis and inflammatory 

 reaction. Proteolytic and amylolytic ferments have been 



1 Prudden and Hodenpyl, New York Medical Journal, 1891. 

 Strauss et Gamaleia, Archives de vied, exp'erimentale, 1891. 

 Grancher et Ledoux-Lebard, ibid., 1892. 



2 Baumgarten, Histogenese des tuberknlosen Processes, 1885. 



8 Buchner, Berlin. Kim. Wochenschrift, 1890, No. 103,047, and 

 Centralblatt f. Chirugie, 1890, No. 50. 



