176 TOXINES AND ANTITOXINES. 



of their volume at 80 C., filtered, and treated with thirty times 

 their quantity of alcohol. The white precipitate thus obtained 

 was left to dry over calcium chloride in vacuo, and furnished a 

 non-hygroscopic white mass. 



GUINARD l made a closer study of the action of malleine. He 

 found that the action of the heart was first stimulated and then 

 lowered, and that a similar stimulation and subsequent depres- 

 sion of the nervous organs also occurred. Sweating was also 

 observed. 



ScHATTENFROH, 2 on the other hand, regards malleine as abso- 

 lutely non-specific in its action. 



The question whether or no malleine has a specific toxic action 

 is as little decided as in the case of tuberculine. It is possible 

 that here, too, we have non-specific symptoms similar to those 

 invariably produced by proteins foreign to the body. 



ANTHRAX POISON. 



We are quite ignorant whether or no there exists a true 

 anthrax toxine. As in the generality of cases, the answer to 

 this question has been rendered extraordinarily difficult by the 

 fact that many investigators made their experiments with the 

 sole object of producing immunity against the anthrax bacillus, 

 by any possible means, and that consequently they made use of 

 living bacilli or the dead cells without troubling themselves 

 about the possible existence of a specific antitoxine-producing 

 poison. At the earliest period it was hardly to be expected 

 that the problem could be stated in such precise terms, but 

 even many later investigators have given almost exclusive 

 attention to the practical question of immunisation. They 

 have endeavoured, as, for instance, has been done by SOBERN- 

 HEIM in his researches into anthrax immunisation, to obtain 

 in every possible way the desired immunity by inoculation, 

 without investigating whether this protection was due to a 

 true antitoxic immunity. We meet with this difficulty in all 

 other investigations into less known poisons ; yet nowhere has 

 the toxine problem remained in such obscurity or the results 

 been so contradictory as here. I must, therefore, content my- 

 self with mentioning the most important researches that have 

 dealt more or less expressly with the hypothetical toxine, and 



"Effets physiolog. du Malleine," Journ. Med. Vet., xlvi., 

 454; Baumgartens Jb., 1895, 311. 



2 Schattenfroh, "Ueber die Wirkung von Bakterien-Proteinen," Zeit.f. 

 Hyg. t xviii., 456, 1894. 



