THE NATURE OF TOXINS 199 



albumoses 1 and peptones were formed by the action of the 

 pathogenic bacteria studied, and further, that the precipitate 

 containing these albumoses was toxic. A similar digestive 

 action has been traced in the case of the tubercle bacillus by 

 Kiihne. 



Further evidence that bacterial toxins are either albumoses 

 or bodies having a still smaller molecule was adduced by C. J. 

 Martin. This worker, by filling the pores of a Chamberland 

 bougie with gelatin, obtained what is practically a strongly 

 supported colloid membrane through which dialysis can be made 

 to take place under great pressure, say, of compressed oxygen. 

 He found that in such an apparatus toxins at least two kinds 

 tried will pass through just as an albumose will. 



Brieger and Boer, working with bouillon cultures of diphtheria 

 and tetanus, separated, by precipitation with zinc chloride, 

 bodies which show characteristic toxic properties, but which had 

 the reactions neither of peptone, albumose, nor albuminate, and 

 the nature of which is unknown. It has also been found that 

 the bacteria of tubercle, tetanus, diphtheria, and cholera can 

 produce toxins when growing in proteid-free fluids. In the case 

 of diphtheria, when the toxin is produced in such a fluid a proteid 

 reaction appears. Of course this need not necessarily be caused 

 by the toxin. Further investigation is here required, for 

 Uschinsky, applying Brieger and Boer's method to a toxin so 

 produced, states that the toxic body is not precipitated by zinc 

 salts, but remains free in the medium. If the toxins are really 

 non-proteid they may, on the one hand, be the final product of 

 a digestive action, or they may be the manifestation of a separate 

 vital activity on the part of the bacteria. On the latter theory 

 the toxicity of the toxic albumoses of Sidney Martin may be due 

 to the precipitation of the true toxins along with these other 

 bodies. ' From the chemical standpoint this is quite possible. 



1 In the digestion of albumins by the gastric and pancreatic juices, the 

 albumoses are a group of bodies formed preliminarily to the production of 

 peptone. Like the latter they differ from the albumins in their not being 

 coagulated by heat, and in being slightly dialysable. They differ from 

 the peptones in being precipitated by dilute acetic acid in presence of 

 much sodium chloride, and also by neutral saturated sulphate of ammonia. 

 Both are precipitated by alcohol. The first albumoses formed in digestion 

 are proto-albumose and hetero- albumose, which differ in the insolubility 

 of the latter in hot and cold water (insolubility and coagulability are 

 quite different properties). They have been called the primary albumoses. 

 By further digestion both pass into the secondary albumose, deutero- 

 albumose, which differs slightly in chemical reactions from the parent 

 bodies, e.g., it cannot be precipitated from watery solutions by saturated 

 sodium chloride unless a trace of acetic acid be present. Dysalbumose is 

 probably merely a temporary modification of hetero-albumose. Further 

 digestion of dentero-albumose results in the formation of peptone. 



