658 THE INTERNAL SECRETIONS AND IMMUNITY. 



ture of 100 C. perceptibly altered the action of these sub- 

 stances, without causing it to disappear. Wall had observed 

 prior to my researches that, when daboia venom is heated, it 

 loses its convulsing power, but not its toxicity, as if only one 

 of the active substances were altered by heat. 



"Soon after these researches, N. Wolfenden obtained from 

 the cobra capello venom an inert peptone, and also very toxic 

 globulin, serin, and casein. The serin kills by inducing ascend- 

 ing paralysis of the cord; the globulin, the most powerful of 

 the three former, assails the respiratory centers; the casein 

 acts similarly, but less actively. 



"It is now well known that the blood of some animals 

 deemed inoffensive contains toxic albuminoids; such is the 

 blood of the eel and of the mura3nida3 (Mosso), the blood of the 

 water-snake (Phisalix and Bertrand), and that of the viper. 

 Finally, certain spiders have also been found to contain tox- 

 albumins. 



"This property of the economy of thus producing toxic 

 albuminoids is evidently pretty general as well among the 

 larger animals as among inferior species; toxic mushrooms 

 and microbes often manufacture toxalbumins. Christmas has 

 shown that the poison secreted by the staphylococcus aureus 

 is albuminoid in nature; it possesses the attributes of these 

 bodies it is digested by pepsin, leaving a nuclein residue, 

 which can be precipitated with alcohol. Injected under the 

 skin, it produces, in animals, a chronic cachexia (Gamaleia). 



"Venomous albumins have also been found in ricin-seeds, 

 in those of the yellow lupine, in the fruits of the papaw and 

 of the jequirity; in the bark of the robinia pseudo-acacia. 



"All these toxins lose a great part of their activity when 

 heated, even though their extracts do not become coagulated. 



"(c) Diastasic Ferments. From the toxalbumins to the 

 diastases there is but a step, although these substances essen- 

 tially differ. The origin of the latter, however, is especially 

 vegetable. 



"Tuberculin, the active substance of the Koch bacillus 

 cultures, is obtained by methodically precipitating these cult- 

 ures by means of alcohol. It possesses all the properties of 

 albuminoids (Millon, Adamkiewicz, and biuret reactions); phos- 



