DYSENTERY. 157 



it had a protective action against both the toxine and infection 

 with living bacilli. 



Whether these soluble poisons are true toxines or toxoids i.e., 

 whether or no they produce antitoxines in the body is still more 

 doubtful than in the case of cholera. PFEIFFER and KOLLE 

 absolutely deny that there is any excretion of a free soluble 

 poison or formation of antitoxine, whilst BITTER concludes that 

 there is a slight production of antitoxine. On the other hand, 

 CHANTEMESSE observed an unmistakable and energetic formation 

 of antitoxine, after the injection of his typhoid toxine, especially 

 in the case of the horse. 



We have thus, as in the case of cholera, a poison firmly 

 retained in the cells of the bacilli, and only to be separated from 

 them with difficulty. Our theoretical conclusions must, there- 

 fore, with all reserve, be very similar to those we have drawn 

 in the case of cholera virus viz., that there possibly exists a 

 typhoid toxine, but that it is hardly excreted in the free state, 

 and that the poisons that have been prepared are greatly altered 

 secondary products. 



BACILLUS COLI COMMUNIS. 



The only statements that the coll bacillus produces a toxine 

 are those of BARBA-MORRHY l (of whose results only a short 

 abstract giving no particulars of the nature of the poison was 

 accessible to me), and that of RODET, who discovered them at 

 the same time in typhoid cultures (q.v.). According to MARTIN'S 

 results (loc. cit.) the coli bacillus and also Gaertner's B. enteritidis 

 appear to behave in quite an analogous manner to the typhoid 

 bacillus as regards the production of their poison. 



VAUGHAN 2 by heating the cells with dilute (1 per cent.) 

 sulphuric acid, obtained a poisonous substance which was cer- 

 tainly not a toxine. With regard to colilysine, vide supra. 



DYSENTERY. 



CONRADI (loc. cit.) has succeeded, by means of the method of 

 aseptic autolysis, in preparing a soluble dysentery poison. 



After eighteen hours' autolysis he obtained poisons which 

 killed large rabbits after the intravenous injection of 0-1 c.c. 

 The symptoms were violent diarrhoea, paralysis, decrease of 

 temperature, &c. In cases of chronic poisoning with smaller 

 doses there were also intestinal ulcers and all the pathological 

 and anatomical appearances of dysentery. 



1 Barba-Morrhy, Baumgartens Jb., 1897, 403. 



2 Vaughan, "The intracellular Toxines of some Pathogenic Bacteria," 

 J. Amer. Med. Assoc., 1903, 828 ; Biochem. CentralbL, i., No. 1,056. 



