168 TOXTNES AND ANTITOXINES. 



tion with this poison, not only against all the tubercle poisons, 

 but also against the protein. 



The chief point that makes one sceptical of the results of these 

 investigations is that the nitrates of the cultures had so slight 

 a toxic action. The authors had practically nothing more than 

 tuberculine in their hands, and this is fairly poisonous when 

 employed in the same manner. None of the investigators deter- 

 mined whether he had obtained a specific toxine which produced 

 in the organism an antitoxine acting only against the toxine 

 itself. An antitoxic immunity against the proteins is a priori 

 hardly conceivable, but, in any case, could not have been pro- 

 duced by the supposed true toxine, and it is just this omnipotence 

 of the "anti-bodies" of these therapeutic sera that lays these 

 statements open to the gravest suspicion. It is quite certain 

 that the existence of a true haptophore toxine of the tubercle 

 bacillus has not been proved by these experiments. 



On the contrary, it appears more and more probable that the 

 tubercle bacillus does not produce any true toxine in the sense 

 of our definition. Hence, notwithstanding its intrinsically very 

 great importance, we can only deal briefly here with the subject 

 of the tubercle poisons. 



TUBERCULINE. 



Under this name are included preparations of different kinds, 

 having in common the characteristic that they are obtained from 

 cultures of tubercle bacilli, and contain their bodies in a nearly 

 unchanged condition. 



. These substances are probably, for the most part, not true 

 toxines. They are, as is shown by their mode of preparation, 

 proteids resisting heat, closely allied to the albumoses, and 

 possibly possessing a certain amount of specific activity. Their 

 chemical nature and relationship to the albumoses has been 

 thoroughly studied by KiJHNE. 1 They have but little toxic 

 action upon a healthy organism, but they produce considerable 

 reactions in tuberculous subjects. 



The original tuberculine of ROBERT KOCH 2 was prepared from 

 a culture of tubercle bacilli grown at 38 C. on the surface of 

 a 4 per cent, glycerin bouillon to which as much air as possible 

 was admitted. After six to eight weeks the cultivations were 

 evaporated to a tenth of their volume, and filtered through a 



1 Kiihne, " Erfahrungen iiber Albumosen u. Peptone," Z. f. BioL, xxix., 

 24, 1892; xxx., 220, 1894. 



2 R. Koch, "Mitt, iiber ein Heilmittel gegen Tuberk.," Deutsch. med. 

 Woch., 1891, 101, 1189. 



