ANTITOXINS 95 



before equally efficacious antitoxins would be discovered for the 

 treatment of all the other bacterial infections to which both man 

 and beast are prone, but this was soon doomed to disappointment. 

 Why this should be is now fairly clear to us, since we have become 

 familiar with the offensive mechanism through which the foreign 

 organism seeks to maintain itself in the animal body, and through 

 which the destruction of the host may even be accomplished. We 

 have thus seen that both the diphtheria and the tetanus bacillus 

 are organisms of the lowest grade of infectiousness which cannot 

 possibly maintain themselves in normal tissues and are readily 

 and rapidly destroyed through the activity of both serum and cells, 

 but which kill nevertheless through the wonderful activity of their 

 specific poisons. Against these the normal organism either possesses 

 no antitoxin at all or such small amounts that a fatal end only too 

 often occurs even though the infection, as such, has been or is being 

 successfully combated. 1 As a result of the infection, an attempt 

 at antibody (antitoxin) formation is, of course, made (active immuni- 

 zation), but unfortunately the toxin may be able to produce its 

 harmful effect before enough antitoxin is formed to neutralize its 

 action. That under such circumstances the introduction of anti- 

 toxin from without (passive immunization) is the logical method of 

 treatment, goes without saying. 



In other infections the conditions are different. Unfortunately, 

 the majority of organisms which are pathogenic for man are either 

 not true toxin producers at all, or, if so, their infectiousness is of a 

 much higher order, so that the mere introduction of an antitoxin, 

 even though it were tuned to the corresponding toxin, so to speak, 

 would not suffice to bring the disease resulting from the infection 

 to a standstill. What is needed in such cases is something that will 

 prevent the continuance of the infection, and that something can 

 scarcely be of the nature of an antitoxin. 



Aside from diphtheria and tetanus, there is actually only one 

 organism, infection with which lends itself to antitoxin treatment, i/ 

 pure and simple, namely, the Bacillus botulinus. Of the other patho- 

 genic organisms the Bacillus pyocyaneus, the staphylococcus, the 

 typhoid, paratyphoid, and dysentery bacillus, the vibrio of cholera 



1 This holds good for tetanus and the occurrence of diphtheria in children, 

 while in adults a not inconsiderable quantity of diphtheria antitoxin is now 

 known to exist in the blood even under normal conditions. 



