TOXIN AND ANTITOXIN 



in the stools disappears; the movements of the bowels become less fre- 

 quent and the severe pains are absent. Finally, the consistency of the 

 stools changes and at the end becomes normal. 



Prophylactic use of the serum has met very favorable confirmation in 

 the work of Kruse, Vaillard and Dopter, and Rosculet. Rosculet's 

 statistics are especially interesting. In 1905 during a dysentery epidemic 

 in Roumania, Rosculet injected eighteen apparently healthy individuals 

 living at the homes where dysentery cases existed, with 5 c.cm. of the 

 serum. Eighteen similar patients were removed from the dysentery 

 surroundings, but received no serum. The results were that of the first 

 group no fresh cases of infection arose, while of the control group fourteen 

 became infected. 



It is rather premature to determine definitely the value of the dysentery 

 serum therapy; enough has been seen, however, to advocate its use when- 

 ever possible. 



Staphylolysin, or Staphylohemotoxin. According to the experi- 



Staphyloly- ments of M. Neisser and Wechsberg the pyogenes staphylo- 



sin. cocci produce a typical hemolysin which is identical for both 



the aureus and albus cultures. By immunization with this 



hemotoxin, an antihemotoxin (antilysin) is obtained. Neisser and 



Wechsberg further discovered that human serum and serum of certain 



animal species normally contained antistaphylolysin ; less, however, in 



amount than immune sera. Working on the principle that in staphylo- 



coccus diseases, a hemotoxin is formed which incites the development of 



antihemotoxin for the protection of the animal, Bruck, Michaelis and 



Schulze attempted to employ the presence of antistaphylolysin in the 



serum as evidence of the existence of staphylococcus infections. 



As Staphylolysin, a twelve to thirteen day old bouillon culture of 

 freshly isolated staphylococcus pyogenes serves very well. This can be 

 preserved by adding 5 c.cm. of the following mixture to 100 c.cm. of the 

 bouillon filtrate: 10 carbolic, 20 glycerin, 70 aqua. The hemotoxin content 

 is approximated according to the following scheme: 



