174 TOXINES AND ANTITOXINES. 



which causes a still more plentiful liberation of those specific 

 receptors, which can then develop their specific reactions in the 

 organism. These intermediate bodies, however, withstand heat 

 and can thus resist high temperatures at which a true toxine, which 

 produces antitoxic immunity, would certainly be destroyed. 



On this assumption, the specific tuberculine reaction in tuber- 

 culous men, as a reaction of a bactericidal nature, would have no 

 connection with the toxic pyrogenic effects in healthy men ; 

 these poisonous principles would be only interfering impurities, 

 and indeed we have seen that, as a matter of fact, KOCH and 

 others have made successful attempts to prepare an almost non- 

 toxic and yet specifically active tuberculine. Moreover, the latest 

 researches of KOCH (loc. cit.\ from which it appears that the 

 serum of tuberculous subjects gives a precipitate with his new 

 tuberculine preparation, appear to support this assumption of 

 specifically active proteids and their precipitines. This hypo- 

 thesis, that the action of tuberculine in its most recent form is 

 due to the liberation of specific amboceptors, materially elucidates 

 and simplifies the problems. Tuberculine occupies a different 

 position, according to BUCHNER, from the series of specific bac- 

 terial poisons, and yet has claims to be regarded as a specific 

 therapeutic and immunising agent, just as much as those dead 

 cells that produce antibacterial immunity in cholera, &c. 



Nevertheless, the question of tubercle poisons needs further 

 study. This hypothesis of the action of tuberculine does not 

 by any means do away with the necessity for such research ; for, 

 as in the case of other bacteria, there may in addition to this 

 be a true toxine which can also bring about specific antitoxic 

 immunity. 



That such a toxine has not yet been discovered may possibly 

 be due to the methods; but, on the other hand, it is not im- 

 probable, as was suggested above, that tubercle bacilli do not 

 produce any true toxine at all. Possibly they form poisons of 

 another kind, which, although not of the nature of toxines, have 

 yet a specific character. 



The results of BEHRING and his pupils in the preparation of 

 very toxic tubercle poisons also point in the same direction, 

 and their discovery of tuberculosamine and its combination 

 with nucleic acid must also be regarded as valuable evidence 

 in support of this theory, although these were undoubtedly 

 not the specific poisons of the tubercle bacillus. For RUPPEL 

 himself concludes that in these compounds we have to deal 

 with derivatives of the cell nucleus. These are undoubtedly 

 not the specific bacterial poisons, which we must certainly 



