MALLEINE. 175 



regard as protoplasmatic or paraplasmatic products. It is not 

 improbable that perfectly analogous substances might be isolated 

 from cell nuclei or cells of other bacteria. 



On the other hand, we cannot recognise as the specific poison the pro- 

 ducts obtained by AucLAiR, 1 who claims to have isolated, by extraction 

 of the cultures with ether, a poison which produces caseous degeneration 

 of the lungs on intratracheal injection ; and, by extraction with chloro- 

 form, a second poison which, he asserts, produces fibrous pneumonia. 



We have therefore, unfortunately, to own that the question 

 of a specific tubercle poison has not yet been decided, even if 

 we exclude the hypothetical action of tuberculine, as described 

 above, entirely from the discussion. 



MALLEINE. 



Malleine contains the cell constituents of the bacilli of glanders 

 in much the same way that the old tuberculine contained those 

 of the tubercle bacilli. The subject of malleine has been in- 

 vestigated almost exclusively by veterinary surgeons from the 

 practical point of view, so that scientifically little or nothing is 

 known about its nature. In the absence of further knowledge 

 we shall do well to apply to malleine the considerations that we 

 have taken into account in the case of the old tuberculine. 



HELMAN, 2 in 1890, was the first to prepare an extract of 

 glanders bacilli, and he was followed by KALNING, who boiled 

 pure cultivations repeatedly with water and filtered them 

 through Chamberland filters. PREUSSE, and subsequently 

 PREISZ, employed glycerin extract of potato cultures. 



JOHNE and PEARSON were the first to use bouillon as the 

 culture medium; they cultivated the bacilli for fourteen days 

 at 37 C. and sterilised the filtrates, or first concentrated the 

 cultures at 80 C. and then filtered them (PEARSON). 



Roux sterilised very virulent cultivations at 110 C. and 

 filtered them after evaporation. 



FOTH (loc. cit.) proceeded in a similar manner. He passed 

 the glanders bacilli several times through animals to render 

 them as virulent as possible, and then cultivated them for 

 twenty days as a surface cultivation on Loffler's meat broth of 

 45 per cent, strength. The cultures were evaporated to a tenth 



1 Auclair, "La Scl^rose pulmonaire, &c." Arch, de M6d. Exper., 1900, 

 189 ; see also Baumgartens Jb., 1898, 475, 476. 



2 I have taken all these references, which were not readily accessible to 

 me in the original, from Foth's paper, "Das Mallein, &c.," Fortschr. d. 

 Med., 1895, 637. 



