8o PA THOGENIC BA CTERIA. 



m line to serpent's venom, contains some normal antitoxin, 

 but only in small amount. 1 Fischl and v. Wunschheim 

 found a small amount of a protecting substance in the 

 blood of newborn infants, which prevented the opera- 

 tion of a fatal dose of diphtheria toxin upon guinea- 

 pigs. 2 



Bolton 3 and the author have found some antitoxicity to 

 diphtheria present in the blood of normal (not experi- 

 mentally immunized) horses. 



The origin of the antitoxin is a very important and 

 interesting question. Is it in the blood, or in all the 

 body juices? Does it come from the leucocytes? Dzerj- 

 gowsky 4 has estimated the quantity of antitoxin con- 

 tained in the blood and organs of horses immunized 

 against diphtheria. Of the constituents of the blood he 

 found (i) the fibrin has no antitoxic power; (2) serum 

 obtained normally and that got by expression from the 

 clot, from the plasma of the same blood, have an equal 

 antitoxic power; (3) the clot from the plasma, therefore, 

 does not retain the active principle; (4) the plasma and 

 the serum have an equal antitoxic power; (5) the red cor- 

 puscles, compared with the plasma, contain traces only 

 of antitoxin; (6) serum containing the juice of the leuco- 

 cytes is less rich in antitoxin than the plasma; (7) the 

 extract of the leucocytes contains relatively little anti- 

 toxin, and the leucocytes themselves traces or none at all. 

 Hence the white blood-corpuscles cannot be the place 

 where the antitoxin is formed. The serous liquids con- 

 tained in organs, such as the Graafian follicles, etc., con- 

 tain as much antitoxin as the blood-serum none of the 

 organs contain as much of the antitoxin as the blood 



If. 



Dzerjgowsky is of the opinion, held probably by a 



1 Ann. de f Inst. Pasteur, x., 12. 



.'M-hriftfiir Hfilkunde, 1895, xvi., 429-482. 

 1 your, of Experimental Medicine, vol. i., No. 3, July, 1896. 

 4 Archives des Sci. Biolog. de I'/nstitut. Imper. de Med. Exper. d St. Peters- 

 bourg, tome V., Nos. 2 and 3, 1897. 



