50 POISONOUS PROTEINS 



sonous bodies by breaking up proteins with a 

 vegetable ferment, papain, also with super- 

 heated steam and dilute acid without the aid of 

 any ferment. Moreover, they found that all the 

 primary, digestive protein derivatives have 

 more or less marked effect upon blood coagu- 

 lation and blood pressure. Pick and Spiro were 

 unable to obtain a poisonous derivative from 

 pure proteins, edestin and casein, and con- 

 cluded that the poisonous agent present in 

 mixed bodies is not a protein at all but an en- 

 zyme for which they proposed the name pepto- 

 zyme. According to their view this in the pro- 

 enzyme stage is widely distributed in the animal 

 body, since they found the poison among the 

 cleavage and digestive products of many or- 

 gans. It might get mixed with the protein split 

 products in digestion with an animal ferment, 

 as pepsin or trypsin, or it exists in the tissue 

 or protein which undergoes digestion ; but take 

 a pure protein like edestin or casein, and split 

 it with acid and no poisonous body results. 

 They claim that the poison never results from 

 the hydrolysis of proteins with alkali. This is 

 interesting in view of the fact that we have 

 found cleavage with dilute alkali the best way 

 of obtaining the protein poison. 

 Underhill has shown the incorrectness of the 



