TUBERCULINE. 173 



prodigiosusy pneumobacillus) that had been prepared in an 

 analogous manner. 



It is thus hardly conceivable that the old tuberculine prepara- 

 tions should possess any specific toxic activity. 



Moreover, their specific protective activity is scarcely to be 

 attributed to an antitoxic process. There appears, rather, to 

 be a liberation of specific bactericidal protective forces, by means 

 of these specific proteids, whether it be that by this treatment 

 similar substances are set free and can be utilised, just as specific 

 bacteriolytic processes are also brought about in the case of 

 cholera, &c., by such substances viz., the receptors of the bac- 

 teria, which concentrate their activity upon the intermediate 

 products as defined by EHRLICH; or whether we have here to 

 deal with specific proteids concentrating their activity upon the 

 precipitines or agylutinines, which act upon the bacilli and are 

 able to bring about specific reactions of a protective or curative 

 nature in the diseased organism. The fact that specific agglu- 

 tinines were present in the serum of tuberculous subjects was 

 made known by ARLOING and COURMONT, and more recently 

 confirmed by KOCH in another way (vide supra). It would 

 thus seem conceivable that the substances extracted from the 

 bacilli were in this case able to bring about bacteriolytic 

 processes similar to those produced by the whole bacteria in 

 the case of cholera, typhus, rinderpest, &c. There has, as yet, 

 been no sufficient reason for concluding that in these immunising 

 processes a separate position is occupied by inoculation with 

 unbroken bacteria, since these delicate organisms are readily 

 absorbed, and when decomposed within the body bring about 

 the curative immunising processes. And the only attempts to 

 produce immunity with "plasmines," in the case of cholera 

 (HARN, loc. cit.), also support the view that in those cases 

 bactericidal, not antitoxic, phenomena play the chief part. On 

 the other hand, the tough tubercle bacilli protected by a thick 

 membrane of fat-like substance (cf. RUPPEL, loc. cit.) are, as 

 KOCH has shown, attacked either not at all or only with great 

 difficulty in the organism, and are thus incapable of bringing 

 about any bactericidal immunising processes. It has, however, 

 been shown by KOCH that slight phenomena of bactericidal 

 immunity appear during their ultimate decomposition. It 

 would appear, then, that by drastic means, especially mechanical 

 trituration of the bacilli and injection of the extracts obtained 

 from them, substances are liberated which lead more rapidly to 

 the production of antibacterial immunity. Still more effective 

 is the crushing of the bacilli and expression of their cell content, 



