TOXINS AND ANTITOXINS. 29 



According to Poehl, there is developed as 

 destroyer a substance possessing energetic oxidiz- 

 ing properties, which he has isolated and named 

 spermine, and which is found in most of the organic 

 fluids and particularly in the leucocytes, the special 

 role of which we will presently study. 



There develops still another cause of elimina- 

 tion, or, to be more exact, of the neutralization of 

 the toxic principles in defense of the organism 

 against the toxins, and that is the formation of 

 antitoxins. 



It is well known that the term virus has been 

 reserved to designate physiological liquids which 

 were characterized, when first they were known, 

 by their property of transmitting to an organism 

 certain functional affections, but the true character 

 of which is to expend their toxicity upon the 

 microbes which occur and are reproduced in the 

 organism, or upon the organized plastidulary granu- 

 lations, as in the case of the rabic virus, the special 

 microbe of which has not as yet been isolated. 



^Pasteur, when studying rabies, found that the 

 brain and spinal marrow of rabid animals contained 

 the pure rabic virus in considerable quantity, and 

 that every particle of the marrow was capable of 

 imparting rabies to a perfectly healthy dog. After 

 having ascertained this fact, he found that he 

 could attenuate ike action of the virus, either by pass- 

 ing the virus through certain animal organisms, such 



