TOXICOLOGY AND PHARMACOLOGY 407 



to accomplish this by washing. J. GEPPERT * inactivated sublimate 

 by means of the action of ammonium sulphid; the sublimate is thus 

 changed to the innocuous mercuric sulphid. In the case of formal- 

 dehyd, ammonia is employed, for by means of ammonia, formalde- 

 hyd is changed to hexamethylentetramin. There is no chemical 

 agent destructive for phenol and phenol-like compounds to which 

 objections cannot be raised. 



From the colloid-chemical standpoint, I regard the principle of 

 chemically removing the disinfectant as erroneous in many cases. 

 The idea which guided GEPPERT and his successors was evidently 

 that if a germ which had been immersed in a disinfectant is placed on 

 a suitable culture medium, the medium abstracts the last traces of 

 the adherent disinfectant; it is thus washed just as a chemist washes 

 a crystalline precipitate on a filter. In this way we consider the 

 effect only for the time during which the germ remained in the disin- 

 fectant, and J. GEPPERT and his followers seek to imitate this limited 

 time by chemical destruction of the disinfectant when the germ 

 is removed. As a matter of fact the process proceeds differently: 

 when the germ is removed from the disinfectant and is placed on a 

 fresh culture medium, it releases the disinfectant only slowly and 

 incompletely in accordance with the laws of adsorption. We may 

 compare the process to the " bleeding" of dyed fabric; especially 

 the bleeding of cotton which has been dyed with a dye that is chemi- 

 cally insufficiently fixed by the fiber and which for days gives up 

 color when washed with water; the dyer says it " bleeds." Thus 

 for a long time by a pure adsorptive action the germ retains the 

 disinfectant and is injured by it. That this assumption is correct is 

 shown by some experimental results taken from the literature, 

 throughout which the expression is employed that the germs are 

 " weakened." This expression appears to me to be the transfer to 

 organisms to which it no longer applies of a conception applicable to 

 men and higher animals. 



According to J. GEPPERT, anthrax spores are weakened but not 

 killed by the action of 0.1 per cent sublimate solution for 15 min- 

 utes. They arc unable to develop even in a culture medium which 

 contains as little as 1 : 2,000,000 sublimate, whereas normal an- 

 thrax bacilli thrive quite well in this medium. Our interpretation 

 of this is that anthrax spores previously treated with 1 : 1000 

 sublimate adsorbs so ^much sublimate that they are in adsorption 

 equilibrium with a nutrient medium that contains 1:2,000,000 

 sublimate. 



HEINZ says, "Sublimate acts in animal infections just the same as 

 when transplanted upon artificial media and the minutest traces 



