28 Professor Marshall Ward [Feb. 24, 



etc., all came under the same general category. In 1880 Pasteur 

 showed that fowl cholera could be produced by means of the poison 

 excreted by the bacilli into the liquid, from which the bacilli them- 

 selves had been removed ; and Brieger, in 1885, then showed the 

 same to be true for tetanus and typhoid. Loffler, 1887, and Hankin, 

 1890, then showed the same to be true for diphtheria and for anthrax, 

 and the toxins of tetanus, cholera, etc., were obtained shortly after- 

 wards. 



Thus was founded the doctrine of toxins. The bacilli of disease 

 do not merely induce the formation of ptomaine poisons in the de- 

 composing tissues ; they form the toxins in their own cells, and then 

 excrete them. 



The lecturer then referred to the similarities of the venenenes of 

 snakes, scorpions, and spiders ; of the toxins in eels' blood ; and of 

 the vegetable toxins ricin, robin, etc., emphasising the fact that all 

 these bacterial, animal, vegetable, and fungal poisons belong to one 

 and the same great family of toxic bodies. 



The horribly intoxicating and poisonous drink made by certain 

 Siberian and Kamschatkan peoples from the fly Agaric, the dry 

 gangrene and paralysis due to ergotism, now a rare disease in western 

 Europe, and the effects of the toxins of tetanus, diphtheria, and other 

 bacilli, all have points in common with the poisons of snakes, of 

 certain seeds, and so on — certain Australian species of Swainsonia 

 impel horses which have eaten it to behave as if trying to climb trees, 

 or to refuse to cross a twig as if it were a large log, reminding one of 

 the effects of Amanita muscaria on man. 



In great part, if not entirely, owing to an experiment of Nuttall's 

 in 1888, in which he found that normal blood has bactericidal 

 properties, researches were undertaken which resulted in the discovery 

 that the sera of animals, either normally or if rendered immune by 

 minimal doses of toxins, contain antidoUil substances to the toxins. 

 Behring and Kitasato, in 1890, who demonstrated the antitoxic power 

 of blood immunised with diphtheria or tetanus to the toxins of these 

 bacilli, was followed in rapid succession by Brieger, Ehrlich, Pick, 

 and others, and the doctrine of the antienzymes and antitoxins was 

 established. 



The lecturer then gave two illustrative cases. Dunbar, in 1903, 

 showed that hay-fever as already maintained by others, was not only 

 due to the pollen of grasses, l)ut he isolated from the pollen-grains a 

 toxin which itself induces all the symptoms of the malady. 



Not only so. He showed that the serum of horses, etc., to which 

 the hay-fever is connnunicated, becomes antitoxic to the malady. 

 This antitoxin has been distributed, and the statistics uphold the 

 accuracy of Dunbar's views. 



That pollen-grains contain enzymes has long been known, and the 

 experiments of Darwin and others have shown that some pollens are 

 poisonous to the stigmas of the wrong plant. Another suggestive 



