638 Typhoid Fever 



to do with a toxic organism. Brieger and Frankel have, 

 indeed, separated a toxalbumin, which they thought to be 

 the specific poison, from bouillon cultures. When injected 

 into guinea-pigs the typhotoxin of Brieger 'causes salivation, 

 accelerated respiration, diarrhea, mydriasis, and death in 

 from twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Klemperer and Levy 

 also point out, as affording clinical proof of the presence of 

 toxin, the occasional fatal cases in which the typical picture 

 of typhoid has been without the characteristic postmortem 

 lesions, the diagnosis being made by the discovery of the 

 bacilli in the spleen. 



Pfeiffer and Kolle* found toxic substance in the bodies 

 of the bacilli only. It was not, like the toxins of diph- 

 theria and tetanus, dissolved in the culture -medium. This 

 was an obstacle to the immunization experiments of both 

 Pfeiffer and Kolle and Lofner and Abel, f for the only method 

 of immunizing animals was to make massive agar-agar 

 cultures, scrape the bacilli from the surface, and distribute 

 them through an indifferent fluid before injecting them into 

 animals. 



If the bacilli grown upon ordinary culture-media are 

 several times washed in distilled water, and then allowed 

 to macerate in normal salt solution, autolysis takes place 

 and a toxin is liberated, showing that the toxin is intracel- 

 lular. Macfadyen and Rowland t liberated an intracellular 

 toxin from cultures of the typhoid bacilli by freezing them 

 with liquid air and grinding them in an agate mortar. Ani- 

 mals immunized with this poison produced an antiserum 

 active against it, but useless against infection with typhoid 

 bacilli. Wright, of Netley, observes that Macfadyen's 

 method of securing this intracellular toxin was unneces- 

 sarily cumbersome, as the body juices of animals injected 

 with dead cultures of the bacilli dissolve them at once and 

 thus liberate the same toxic product. 



Besredka|| and Macfadyen** think that exotoxin is also 

 forrned. Vaughanff has obtained poisonous and non- 



* "Deutsche med. Wochenschrift," Nov. 12, 1896. 



t "Centralbl. f. Bakt. u. Parasitenk.," Jan. 23, 1896, Bd. xix, No. 

 23, P- Si- 



J "Brit. Med. Jour.," 1903. 



Ibid., April, 4 1903, i, p. 786. 



|| "Ann. de 1'Inst. Pasteur," 1895, x, 1896, xi. 

 ** "Centralbl. f. Bakt.," etc., 1906, i. 

 ft "Amer. Jour. Med. Sci.," 1908, cxxxvi. 



