6 TOXINES AND ANTITOXINES. 



splitting off free haptophore side-chains in suitable organisms 

 i.e., of producing antitoxines. 



Although each individual toxine possesses its own character- 

 istics, which can only be dealt with properly in the special part, 

 yet all true toxines have a number of properties in common 

 which justify us in speaking of them collectively. 



Bacterial toxines share these properties with all the other 

 toxines known to us, such as snake venoms, the poison of the 

 blood of the eel and murcena, spider and toad venoms, ricine, 

 abrine, crotine, &c. 



In the first place, the mode of production is common to the 

 bacterial toxines. They are to be regarded not, it would seem, 

 as the products of culture media altered by the invasion of 

 bacteria, but, as was demonstrated by BucHNER, 1 as the actual 

 products of the cell protoplasm, as secreted products of bac- 

 terial cells. Just as the cell of the pancreatic glands produces 

 and secretes its trypsin and the starch cell of wheat endosperm 

 its diastase, so do the bacterial cells secrete their specific toxines. 

 The fact that in the case of certain micro-organisms e.g., of 

 cholera, &LG. the toxines may, under suitable conditions, be 

 retained firmly in the protoplasm, has also its analogy among 

 ferments, for we find the yeast enzymes possessing exactly the 

 same characteristic. 



When grown upon suitable culture media, pathogenic micro- 

 organisms that produce toxines usually develop their charac- 

 teristic poisons within a very short time. Thus, SpRONCK 2 

 obtained a very active diphtheria toxine within forty-eight hours. 



The virulence increases, however, with the age of the culti- 

 vation. Roux and YERSIN S found that a filtered diphtheria 

 cultivation of seven days' growth killed a rabbit in six days, 

 but that after forty-two days' growth an equal dose of the same 

 cultivation caused death in a much shorter time. SPRONCK'S 

 diphtheria toxine was ten times more virulent after five or six 

 days' than after forty-eight hours' growth. Still, the virulence 

 attains its maximum after a certain time, and then begins to 

 diminish owing to the decomposition of the toxine (vide infra, 

 Toxoids), so that old cultivations become less poisonous. Then, 

 after a fairly long time, the degree of virulence usually becomes 

 constant. 



1 Buchner, "Die Bedeutung der aktiven loslichen Zellprodukte, &c.," 

 Munch, med. Woch., 1897, 12. 



2 Spronck, "Prepar. de la tox, dipth.," Ann. Past., xii., 701, 1898. 



3 Roux and Yersin, "Contribution a 1'etude de la diphtheric," ibid., iii., 

 273, 1889; iv., 385, 1890. 



