200 TOXINES AND ANTITOXINES. 



above, which exactly recall those observed in the case of 

 diphtheria poison. 



It is as doubtful in the case of ricine as in that of the bacterial 

 poisons whether there are not cases of dissociated equilibrium 

 here. DANYSZ (loc. cit.), in fact, observed very striking ratios. 

 The fact that there is an optimum point of mixture (vide supra) 

 for the production of the largest precipitate is only a fairly 

 weighty argument ; and a far more important reason is that, 

 according to DANYSZ, there is never an absolutely neutral mix- 

 ture. He found that these mixtures invariably possessed both 

 toxic and antitoxic action i.e., that although they themselves 

 had a slight toxic action they were yet able to retard or 

 altogether prevent death on the addition of a whole lethal dose. 

 His speculations based on these facts are very similar to those 

 of BORDET (see General Part). It is probable that the truth is 

 that we have here to deal with dissociated conditions of equili- 

 brium, such as were found by AERHENIUS and MADSEN in the 

 case of tetanolysine. 



ANTIRICINE. 



JACOBY has also made attempts to isolate antiricine. It may 

 at once be mentioned that any separation of an antitoxine from 

 an antiagglutinine has not been found possible by any method, 

 and that, notwithstanding the theoretical considerations given 

 above, we have thus in practice to deal with an individual 

 substance. 



Antiricine when salted out with ammonium sulphate is quan- 

 titatively precipitated in the fraction that falls when the degree 

 of saturation reaches ^- to J- of the total amount. In this way 

 it can be separated from a large proportion of the other colloids. 



Experiments with trypsin on the same lines as described above 

 in the case of ricine showed that it absolutely resisted the action 

 of that enzyme. 



Antiricine was quite unaltered after two hours' heating at 

 60 C., and after digestion for thirty minutes with an equal 

 amount of N/10 sulphuric acid or N/10 soda solution at 37 C. 

 Pepsin-hydrochloric acid had no effect upon antiricine after an 

 hour at 35 C. On the other hand, it was destroyed by acids 

 at 60 C. 



Antiricine thus appears to be a substance resembling the 

 bacterial antitoxines in stability. It is a simple receptor of 

 the first class, but provided with only one haptophore group. 



STEPANOFF (loc. cit.) was able to detect antitoxine in the blood 

 of rabbits, even twenty-four hours after the injection of serum 



