INFECTION AND IMMUNITY. 469 



Similar germicidal, ferment-like globulins have been 

 isolated from the blood bj Ogata/ and in their studies 

 upon tetanus Tizzoni and Cattani^ found a body that 

 was antagonistic to the poison produced by the organism 

 of this disease. 



According to the observations of Vaughan,^ the most 

 important germicidal or protective agents possessed by 

 the body are the nucleins; and Kossel has shown that 

 the cholera vibrio, streptococcus, staphylococcus, and 

 typhoid bacillus are destroyed by 0.5 percent, solution 

 of nucleinic acid. 



Hankin believes the globulins or ''defensive pro- 

 teids" that he has discovered and the albuminoid 

 bodies studied by Buchner to be identical. The most 

 interesting and, in the light of work that has appeared 

 since, the most important, of Hankin' s observations 

 were not those upon the power of these globulins to 

 destroy the vitality of living organisms, but rather those 

 upon the relation between them and the poisonous me- 

 tabolic products of growth of the organisms. For ex- 

 ample, if the poisonous products of virulent anthrax 

 ! )acilli be isolated and mixed with the globulin extracted 

 from normal tissues, the experiments of Hankin showed 

 a directly destructive action on the part of the bacterial 

 products. He found that the amount of poisonous 

 albumose produced by the attenuated anthrax bacilli, 

 tliat are employed as vaccines, was much less than that 

 jiroduced by the organisms possessing full virulence, 

 and he suggests that perhaps the protective influence of 

 vaccinations that are practised by introducing into the 

 animal the organisms that have been attenuated in vir- 



1 Centr. f. Bakt. u. Parasitenkende, 1891, vol. ix. p. 599. 

 - Ibid , p. 685. 2 Vaughan : Medical News, May 20, 1893. 



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