THE NATURE OF TOXINS 193 



accounted for by the development of hypersensitiveuess to the 

 protoplasm of the invading bacteria. It may be said here that 

 the effect seen when horse serum is injected into a rabbit 

 i luring its hypersensitive stage to this substance bears a striking 

 resemblance to what is seen in natural infection in man by the 

 cholera vibrio. 



The phenomena of any bacterial disease may thus in reality 

 be due to very different and complex causes. 



The Nature of Toxins. There is still comparatively little 

 known regarding this subject, and it chiefly relates to the extra- 

 cellular toxins. The earlier investigations upon toxins suggested 

 that analogies exist between the modes of bacterial action and 

 what takes place in ordinary gastric digestion, and the idea was 

 worked out for anthrax, diphtheria, tetanus, and ulcerative 

 endocarditis by Sidney Martin. This observer found that 

 albumoses l and peptones were formed by the action of the 

 pathogenic bacteria studied, and further, that the precipitate 

 containing these albumoses was toxic. A similar digestive 

 action has been traced in the case of the tubercle bacillus by 

 Kiihne. 



Further evidence that bacterial toxins are either albumoses 

 or bodies having a still smaller molecule is adduced by C. J. 

 Martin. This worker, by filling the pores of a Chamberland 

 bougie with gelatin, has obtained what is practically a strongly 

 supported colloid membrane through which dialysis can be made 

 to take place under great pressure, say, of compressed oxygen. 

 He finds that in such an apparatus toxins at least two kinds 

 tried will pass through just as an albumose will. 



Brieger and Boer, working with bouillon cultures of diphtheria 

 and tetanus, separated, by precipitation with zinc chloride, 



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

 albumoses are a group of bodies formed preliminarily to the production 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-alburnose and hetero-albumose, which ditfer in the insolubility 

 of the latter in hot and cold water (insolubility and coagulability are 

 ipiite different properties). They have been called the primary albumoses. 

 Hv further digestion both pass into the secondary albumose, deutero- 

 .illiumose, 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. 



'3 



