TETANUS TOXINE. 123 



coveries of poison in the organs of dead animals must be received 

 with great scepticism ; it is impossible to know with absolute 

 certainty what has actually been extracted and what kind of 

 poisonous substances may have been formed during the process 

 of disease with its alterations in the protoplasm substances that 

 may have absolutely no connection with tetanus toxine, and 

 against which the antitoxine is powerless. Even BLUMENTHAL 

 himself, as also more recently COURMONT and DOYON, now cite 

 these discoveries with great caution, and leave it an open question 

 how far this poison from the organs corresponds with the actual 

 tetanus poison. BLUMENTHAL regards it as a combination of the 

 true poison with the cell substance. This cannot be proved, 

 however, by such means. To recapitulate, COURMONT'S fermen- 

 tation theory of tetanus toxine has not as yet been proved, and 

 is as yet superfluous. Whether, notwithstanding, it is not 

 correct has yet to be decided. But it is advisable not to obscure 

 this extremely difficult field by additional hypotheses for which 

 definite support is lacking. 



Tetanus Antitoxine. The antitoxine of tetanus behaves 

 towards its toxine in a manner essentially analogous to that of 

 diphtheria i.e., its antitoxic power can be shown to stand in 

 certain definite relationships to the toxine. Both enter into 

 combination with their toxines, and subsequent separation is 

 impossible. The combination does not take place so rapidly, 

 however, in the case of tetanus toxine, and hence, according to 

 DoNiTZ, 1 the test should not be applied until after forty-five 

 minutes. Moreover, the degree of saturation depends upon the 

 concentration ; the greater this is, the more rapid and complete 

 the saturation, so that solutions of as nearly as possible equal 

 concentration must be taken for the comparison. As regards the 

 quantitative relationships the conditions are approximately the 

 same as in the case of diphtheria. In this case, however, they 

 have not been so fully elucidated, which is to be attributed, in 

 the main, to the extraordinary instability of the toxine. The 

 compound also appears to be much less stable, and sooner to 

 attain conditions of equilibrium (on this point see the General 

 Part). The serum can be preserved for a long time by the 

 addition of 1 per cent, of chloroform or O6 per cent, of phenol if 

 kept cold and in the dark. Alcohol and distilled water are 

 harmless to it (BEHRING 2 ). 



Roux and VAILLARD (loo. cit.) were able to dry the cow's 



1 Donitz, Sericht ub. d. Thatigkeit des Icgl. Institute f. Serumforsch. , &c. 

 Reprint from the Klin. Jahrb., 1899, vii. 

 ' 2 Behring, Die Blutserumtherapie, iii., Leipzig, 1892. 



