STAPHYLOLYSIN. 



Staphyloly- 

 sin. 



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.c. 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 were infected. 



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

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

 possible. 



Staphylolysin, or Staphylohemotoxin. According to the experi- 

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

 cocci produce a typical hemolysin which is identical for both 

 the aureus and albus cultures. By immunization with this 

 hemotoxin, an antihemotoxin (antitysin) is obtained. Neisser and Wechs- 

 berg further discovered that serum both human and of certain animal species 

 normally contained antistaphylolysin, less, however, in amount than immune 

 sera. Working on the principle that in staphylococcus diseases, a hemo- 

 toxin is formed which incites the. development of antihemotoxin for the pro- 

 tection 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.c. of the following mixture to 100 c.c. of the 

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

 is approximated according to the following scheme: 



Thus 0.025 is the smallest dose which can completely hemolyse the given 

 quantity of red blood cells. 



The amount of antilysin is estimated by adding varying amounts of 

 serum to the constant minimal hemolytic dose of the staphylolysin and 

 determining what amounts of serum contain enough antilysin to prevent 



