ANTITOXINS 27 



Nature of Antitoxins in General. But little is 

 known concerning the constitution of antitoxins, 

 for we do not know them apart from serum or 

 serum constituents. It seems probable that they 

 are proteid in character, but this has not been 

 positively decided. It has been found that like 

 the globulins they are quite resistant to the action 

 of trypsin, but are acted on by pepsin-hydrochloric 

 acid. In general they withstand a fair degree of 

 heat, certainly far more than the toxins. Anti- 

 toxins are to be regarded as inactive substances, 

 effecting merely a blocking of the haptophore 

 group of the corresponding toxin. They do not 

 act on the toxins destructively. This is indicated 

 by experiments of Wassermann on pyocyaneus toxin, 

 and of Calmette and Morgenroth 1 on snake venom, 

 which showed that in the toxin-antitoxin com- 

 bination, the toxin could again manifest itself after 

 the antitoxin had been destroyed. The antitoxins 

 therefore are not ferment-like substances. As far 

 back as 1897 attempts were made to determine the 

 chemical nature of the antitoxins. In that year 

 Belfanti and Carbone 2 found that the antitoxin 

 was precipitated with the globulins of the serum by 

 means of magnesium sulphate. Dieudonne 3 had 



1 Morgenroth, Berlin, klin. Wochenschr., 1905. 



2 Belfanti and Carbone, Centralblatt Bacteriologie (Ref.), Vol. 

 xxiii, 1898. 



"* Dieudonne", Arbeiten a. d. kaiserl. Gesundheitsamte. Vol. xiii, 

 1897 



