Immunity of the skin and mucous membranes 425 



against the diphtheria poison than is pepsin. Thus, the pancreatic 

 juice of both the rabbit and the guinea-pig destroys this toxin much 

 more actively than does the gastric juice. The pancreatic juice of the 

 dog exerts a very powerful action on the same toxin. A gramme of this 

 fluid neutralises ten thousand lethal doses of the toxin. Wehrmann, 

 also, found that trypsin inhibits the poisonous action of snake 

 venom. Bile also exerts an action upon certain poisons. Mixed 

 with diphtheria and tetanus toxins it prevents their pathogenic effect. 

 It also neutralises the venom of snakes, as has been observed by 

 Fraser 1 , Phisalix 2 and Calmette 3 . All the venoms, when placed in 

 contact with fresh bile for 24 hours, induce no injurious effect when 

 the mixture is injected into normal animals. Bile, heated to 100 C., [446] 

 and even to 120C., is still, though more feebly, active. To obtain 

 these results, however, it is indispensable to prepare, beforehand, 

 a mixture of the two fluids. When injected separately, whether at 

 the same time as, before, or after, the venom, the bile does not 

 prevent poisoning. The venom when injected directly into the gall- 

 bladder of the rabbit sets up fatal intoxication to the same degree as 

 does the same dose of venom introduced subcutaneously. Calmette, 

 who made this experiment, explains this negative result as due to the 

 too rapid absorption of the venom, which has not had time to be 

 affected by the destructive action of the bile. 



A protective action of the bile has been determined with regard 

 to two viruses, the micro-organisms producing which are not, as yet, 

 known. Koch 4 succeeded in vaccinating Bovidae with the bile of 

 animals that had died from rinderpest, and Frantzius 5 prevented 

 animals from contracting rabies when he inoculated into them rabic 

 virus mixed with the bile of rabbits that had succumbed to that 

 disease. Vallee 6 points out, however, that the bile of the normal 

 rabbit produces exactly the same effect. Here, then, we have to do 

 with a preventive action of the bile, as such, against the rabic virus. 

 In the present state of our knowledge it is impossible to say whether 

 this influence of the bile is directed against the toxin or against the 

 unknown micro-organism. Analogy would lead us to accept the 

 former of these two suppositions. 



1 Brit. Med. Journ., London, 1897, VoL II, p. 595. 



2 Compt. rend. Soc. de biol, Paris, 1898, p. 1057. 



3 Ann. de VInst. Pasteur, Paris, 1898, t. xn, p. 345. 



4 Deutsche med. Wchnschr., Leipzig, 1897, SS. 225, 241. 



5 Centralbl f. Bakteriol u. Parasitenk., Jena, 1898, Abt. I, Bd. xxm, S. 782. 



6 Ann. de Vlnst. Pasteur, Paris, 1899, t xiu, p. 506. 



