Miscellaneous Papers. 309 



renoe (the flow-and-ebb phases of the opsonin treatment). On the 

 other hand, Doctor Koch, in his studies, increased the negative 

 phase of development by second inoculations, and his patients 

 died. In other words, Doctor Koch had been striking out blindly, 

 since he understood nothing as to the true rationale of the opsonin 

 treatment. But since the successful issue of their experimental 

 labors, Professor Wright and his assistants have been unable to 

 find hours enough in both day and night for meeting the demands 

 upon their clinical output. And yet they are unaware of the na- 

 ture of that definite compound which is always produced by the 

 phthisis microbe in human cells; and their work is thus hampered 

 by their inability to spread the requisite information among medi- 

 cos at large (a facilitation which, did they possess it, would enable 

 physicians to assume the responsibility, or a share in it, for the 

 inoculation processes) . All physical chemists are agreed that the 

 opsonin treatment, as a method of diagnosis, is a standard one; 

 while yet, since this treatment stands without a "guard" or "aid" 

 to assist the microbe in passing the so-called cheese-product-form- 

 ing in phthisis, and the like substance-forming periods in other 

 diseases, this inoculation lacks a vitally essential factor. 



IV. A DEFINITE ALBUMIN CREATED BY TUBERCULAR BACILLI. 



The experimenters of the decade just ended did not understand 

 the chemistry of the problem under consideration. They were 

 working from a "rule-of-thumb" process in all that pertained to 

 the opsonin content and the albumin content of the excretions and 

 the lesions of tubercles, in the case of phthisis and its allied forms 

 in the human body. They therefore passed upon these elements 

 and their phenomena in this manner: "The lung tissue is filled 

 with a substance which, by chemical means, exhibits albumin, salts, 

 and nothing else that is characteristic." Now, this is, from the 

 writer's point of view, a very unscientific finding. Consequently 

 the writer must now endeavor to establish, upon a reasonably secure 

 basis, the verity and the applicability of the principles inwrought 

 with the following discoveries which the writer has personally made: 



(a) The opsonin content always contains nitrogen compounds 

 of a high albuminous character. 



(J) The albumin content of the phthisis-infected tissue is defi- 

 nite in its character. To discover this character and to accomplish 

 the conversion of the albumin content into a substance potentially 

 soluble and also nonparalyzing to the microbes which are ( poten- 

 tially) helpful in this eliminative work is the secret of the solution 

 of this heretofore-described "opsonin battle." 



