120 PATHOGENIC BACTERIA. 



assures us that the toxin is not destroyed by the contact, 

 as mixtures of brain substance and toxin which were 

 inactive for guinea pigs caused fatal tetanus in mice. 



Wassermann believes that the mixture of tetanus toxin 

 and brain substance is neutral — i. e., inactive — because 

 "every antitoxin producing toxin is specific in the sense 

 that it produces its symptoms by chemic combination of 

 its toxophoric atoms with some cell substance in the body 

 of the susceptible animal." The tetanus toxin acting 

 specifically upon the nervous system, unites with the 

 nervous substance chemically in vitro, and is then unable 

 to unite with that of the animal into which it is injected. 



Ingenious and suggestive as this hypothesis is, it may 

 not be true, for Myers 1 made a series of experiments that 

 would seem to overthrow it. Taking cobra venom as the 

 specific poison, and selecting the nervous system, upon 

 which it undoubtedly acts in producing death by paralysis 

 of the respiration, he found that there was no part of the 

 nervous system that combined with it in vitro, or in any 

 way changed it, the injections of the mixture invariably 

 causing the death of the animal. 



Kanthack^ found that extracts of the liver protected 

 against cobra venom, but Myers disproved this, and after 

 investigating all of the major organs of the body dis- 

 covered that there was but one organ in the body that 

 had the power of annulling the effects of cobra poison, 

 viz., the adrenal body. He found that the fresh organs 

 in infusion and the dried organs pulverized were alike 

 able to destroy the poison, and that the adrenals of all the 

 animals studied exerted a similar effect. He further found 

 that the degree of neutralization is very limited, and that 

 o. i milligram of the venom being fatal to a guinea pig 

 of 250-350 grams weight, the adrenal tissue when 

 mixed with it was able to destroy somewhat more than 

 this, although the law of multiples so characteristic of 

 the antitoxins was not applicable here. 



1 Lancet, July 2, 1898. 



8 Report of the Local Government Board, 1895, vi., p. 212. 



