30 Professor Marshall Ward on Fungi. [Feb. 24, 



laboratory lie under suspicion of connection with grain-poisoning, or at 

 any rate with poisoning of fungi used as food. 



To say the least, we want further and extensive researches from 

 this point of view into the aetiology of Acrodymia in Mexico, Algeria, 

 etc., and of the Columbian Pelade, of the " trembles" of cattle and 

 sheep, and of the " milk-sickness " of the North American prairies, and 

 even diseases like beri-beri, etc. 



The conclusions, the lecturer pointed out, to which we are driven 

 may be thus summarised : — 



(1) Fungi, like animals and other plants, including bacteria, 

 excrete enzymes, and utilise them in the same way and for the same 

 purposes. 



(2) The poisons of the fungi are toxins, not only similar in 

 character to the poisonousalkaloids, toxalbumens, etc.,of the bacteria, 

 and of the higher plants, the venenenes of the snakes, etc., but their 

 poisonous actions in the paralysis of nerve-ends, etc., are essentially 

 the same. 



{?)) These poisons, etc., introduced into the blood of animals, 

 call forth the activities of antitoxins and antienzymes, as do the toxins 

 of animals, bacteria, etc., in similar circumstances. 



(4) The presumption is, therefore, justified that the action of 

 the enzymes and toxins of parasitic fungi on the proteid cell-contents 

 of their plant-hosts is similar in principle to that on animal proteids, 

 and that the host reacts by means of antienzymes and antitoxins. 



The lecturer then adverted to the difficulties of obtaining the 

 toxins and antitoxins from sap, and concluded by showing in specific 

 cases — the rusts of wheat and grasses — how probable it is that, since 

 no anatomical features explain the facts of predisposition and im- 

 munity, and the latter cannot be referred to climatic conditions or to 

 peculiarities of soil, etc., the above considerations will be found to 

 apply, a matter dealt with elsewhere by the lecturer. 



[M. W.] 



