2 TOXINES AND ANTITOXINES. 



true toxines, but also others that had nothing in common with 

 them except their apparent proteid nature. 



On the other hand, one very important and far-reaching theo- 

 retical result of these researches was that a comparison was drawn 

 between these bacterial toxalbumins and other toxalbumins of 

 the animal and vegetable kingdom, such as snake poison and the 

 like on the one hand, and on the other the poisonous vegetable 

 ^rjoteids r^tw,; abnirte, and crotine, first investigated by ROBERT 

 anti'his pupili. V* Tn.e* most important deduction from this point 

 of ^yi&w^as. that. fir,st. drawn at a later period by EHRLICH, CAL- 

 'HJfejf-E; krid'e^heps^yiz.^ that the specific bacterial poisons do, as 

 a matter of fact, enter* into a fundamental relationship with the 

 cell products in question of higher organisms to form specific 

 " anti-bodies " in the organism of the attacked animal, so that 

 EHRLICH'S side-chain theory was applicable in general to their 

 action. These poisons are haptines in EHRLICH'S conception, 

 and, as regards the theory, it matters little what was their origin. 

 BRIEGER'S great service lies in the fact that he was the first to 

 show a relationship between bacterial poisons and other known 

 poisonous substances. Hence it is not a very essential point 

 that BRIEGER'S views require modification in two respects, in 

 consequence of later researches, of which his own were not the 

 least important. In the first place, the relationship towards 

 other toxalbumins does not hold good in the case of all the bac- 

 terial poisons isolated by BRIEGER, for very many of these are 

 substances of non-specific character, not comparable with ricine, 

 &c., since they are not haptines. In point of fact, there remain 

 practically only the poisons of diphtheria, tetanus, Bacillus 

 botulinus, and B. pyocyaneus as typical true toxines (e.g., 

 tetanolysine, staphylolysine, and staphyloleucocidine, with pro- 

 bably also the blood-solvent poisons of other bacteria), and some 

 others, such as the poisons of cholera and typhus. Moreover, 

 BRIEGER himself, at a later period, stated that his diphtheria 

 toxine was not a proteid, and the proteid nature of ricine is also 

 very doubtful, whereas snake poisons, even in the present condi- 

 tion of our knowledge, appear to be proteins. In this respect, 

 however, toxines resemble the closely analogous enzymes, among 

 which, in addition to, presumably, true proteids (trypsin, diastase 

 (?) ), there are substances of high molecular weight that belong to 

 another class (pepsin, invertase). The definition of a true 

 "toxine" is, therefore, arrived at in the following manner in 

 the case of bacterial poisons : 



All bacteria produce certain chemical substances in the media 

 in which they develop. 



