336 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1937 



Certain scholars share the views of D'Herelle; on the contrary, 

 Bordet and others believe that the bacteriophage in reality is only a 

 property acquired by the microbe itself; a nutritive vitiation which 

 issues from the hereditary lytic principle. He has advanced weighty 

 arguments in favor of this interpretation. 



ANTITOXINS AND CRYPTOTOXINS 



Roux and Yersin have been the first to discover that certain mi- 

 crobes are to.xic to an organism because they elaborate poisons that 

 are called toxins. These toxins, injected experimentally, arc capable 

 of provoking the same symptoms in the animals as does the illness of 

 which the microbe is the agent; they can cause death. Injected in 

 small doses, they stimulate the production by the organism of specific 

 antibodies which are called antitoxins. 



II. Vincent discovered that certain fatty acids in combination with 

 alkalies have the remarkable property of neutralizing the most active 

 microbic toxins, in almost infinitesimal doses. He has demonstrated 

 that when some traces of these bodies are added to microbian toxins 

 of diphtheria bacillus, Clostridium tetani, dysGiitQvy bacillus, colibacillus, 

 Clostridium oedematis maligni, etc., they neutralize their pathogenic 

 action after a contact of from some hours to 4 days, at a temperature of 

 38 to 39°, according to the nature of the substance and that of the toxin. 

 The animals can support toxins thus treated up to doses of 500 to 

 1,000 times greater than one mortal dose not treated. At the same 

 time, II. Vincent has shown that toxins influenced by this treatment 

 are not entirely destroyed. They subsist in direct combination with 

 the micella of the soaps adsorbed by them. If some acid is added 

 to the tetanus toxin that has been treated and become inactive for 

 the animal, and when this mixture is immediately injected, the 

 animal has tetanus in a secondary weaker form. The toxin has thus 

 been simply immobilized, disguised in the complex toxin soap. Pro- 

 fessor Vincent has given to toxins in tliis state the name of crypto- 

 toxins. 



If, to the neutralized toxin, there is added, 4 or 5 days later, one- 

 fourth or one-half cubic centimeter of fresh toxin, the mixture does 

 not become toxdc, which proves that the pure toxin has been neutral- 

 ized biologically by an available surplus of the chemical antibodies. 

 It is evident that this surplus is detached from the molecules of 

 cryptotoxins to then fix itself on the micella of fresh toxin, because 

 of the law of molecular attraction. 



These researches have led this scholar, because of the similarity of 

 mode of action of the antitoxins with that of the cryptotoxic agents, 

 to formulate a theory of the general constitution of the antibodies 

 founded on the laws of physical chemistry and of molecular attraction. 



