138 THE TOXINES PRODUCED BY BACTERIA. 



the staphylococcus aureus. In the case of tetanus, as in 

 diphtheria, rigorous tests could be applied to determine 

 whether the substance isolated was the toxine, and in the 

 one experiment recorded, where the toxalbumin was injected 

 into a guinea-pig, death with spasms and paralysis resulted. 

 In the case of the toxalbumins of the other organisms 

 death occurred from their injection, but no characteristic 

 symptoms or pathological effects took place. These tox- 

 albumins presented no special chemical reaction, though 

 the authors considered them allied to serum albumin. 

 They probably consisted largely of albumoses, 1 whose pre- 

 sence is to be accounted for, partly by the fact that the 

 ordinary bacteriological media were used as the culture 

 fluid, partly by the fact that they were produced by the 

 digestive action of the bacteria investigated. They con- 

 tained the toxic bodies in mixture with other substances. 



The analogies between the modes of bacterial action 

 and what takes place in ordinary gastric digestion have 

 already been indicated, and these have been very fully 

 worked out for certain pathogenic bacteria by Sidney 

 Martin. This observer took, not solutions artificially made 

 up with albumoses, but the natural fluids of the body or 

 definite solutions of albumins, and, further, never subjected 

 the results of the bacterial growth to heat above 40 C. 



1 In the digestion of albumins by the gastric and pancreatic juices the 

 albumoses are a group of bodies formed preliminarily to the elaboration of 

 peptone. Like the latter they differ from the albumins in their not being 

 coagulated by heat, and in being slightly dialysable. They differ from 

 the peptones in being precipitated by dilute acetic acid, in presence of 

 much sodium chloride, and also by neutral saturated sulphate of 

 ammonia. Both are precipitated by alcohol. The first albumoses 

 formed in digestion are proto - albumose and hetero-albumose, which 

 differ in the insolubility of the latter in hot and cold water (insolu- 

 bility and coagulability are quite different properties). They have 

 been called the primary albumoses. By further digestion both pass 

 into the secondary albumose, deutero-albumose, which differs slightly 

 in chemical reactions from the parent bodies, e.g. , it cannot be precipitated 

 from watery solutions by saturated sodium chloride unless a trace of 

 acetic acid be present. Dysalbumose is probably merely a temporary 

 modification of hetero-albumose. Further digestion of deutero-albumose 

 results in the formation of peptone. 



