360 TETANUS. 



his subsequent work, therefore, he employed splinters of 

 wood soaked in cultures in which spores were present, and 

 subsequently subjected for one hour to a temperature of 

 80 C. The latter treatment not only killed all the 

 bacilli, but, as we shall see, was sufficient to destroy the 

 activity of the toxines. When such splinters are intro- 

 duced subcutaneously, death results by the development 

 of the spores which they carry. In this way he com- 

 pleted the proof that the bacilli by themselves can form 

 toxines in the body and produce the disease. 



The species of animals mentioned may also be inocu- 

 lated with the pus of wounds which contain the tetanus 

 bacilli. Further, if a small quantity of garden earth be 

 placed under the skin of a mouse, death from tetanus takes 

 place in a great many cases. Sometimes, however, in such 

 circumstances death occurs without tetanic symptoms, and 

 is not due to the tetanus bacillus but to the bacillus of malig- 

 nant cedema, which also is of common occurrence in the 

 soil (v. infra). By such experiments, supplemented by the 

 culture experiments mentioned, the natural habitats of the 

 B. tetani, as given above, have become known. 



The Toxines of the Tetanus Bacillus. The tetanus 

 bacillus being thus accepted as the cause of the disease, we 

 have to consider how it produces its pathogenic effects. 



Almost contemporaneously with the work on diphtheria was the 

 attempt made with regard to tetanus to explain the general symptoms 

 produced, by supposing that the bacillus could excrete soluble poisons. 

 It was first of all stated that ptomaines occurred in tetanus cultures 

 and organs. Brieger, for instance, in his earlier work recorded that a 

 base tetanin could be isolated from dead cultures, and this, as well as 

 another base called tetanotoxin, was also obtained by Kitasato and 

 Weyl. When injected into animals, these substances produced spasms 

 and death, but though they may have contained the real toxine they 

 were obtained by the earlier faulty methods. 



In 1890 Brieger and Fraenkel announced that they had 

 isolated a toxalbumin from tetanus cultures, and this body 

 was independently discovered by Faber in the same year. 

 Brieger and Fraenkel's body consisted practically of an 



