OCCURRENCE OF BACTERIAL TOXINES. 155 



may be regarded as the chief facts regarding bacterial 

 toxines which have been revealed by the study, partly of 

 the bodily tissues of animals infected by the bacteria con- 

 cerned, partly by what occurs in artificial cultures of these 

 bacteria. The dead bodies of certain species have been 

 found to be very toxic. When, for instance, tubercle bacilli 

 are killed by heat and injected into a susceptible animal 

 tubercular nodules are found to develop round the sites 

 where they have lodged. From this it is inferred that they 

 must have contained characteristic toxines, seeing that 

 characteristic lesions result. The bodies of the cholera 

 vibrio are likewise toxic. Such intracellular toxines, as 

 they have been called, may appear in the fluids in which 

 the bacteria are living (i) by excretion in an unaltered or 

 altered condition, (2) by the disintegration of the bodies of 

 the organisms which we know are always dying in any 

 bacterial growth. Sometimes the media in which bacteria 

 are growing become extremely toxic. This is much greater 

 in some cases than in others. The two best examples of 

 bacteria producing soluble toxines are the diphtheria and 

 tetanus bacilli. In these and similar cases when bouillon 

 cultures are filtered bacterium-free by means of a porcelain 

 filter, highly toxic fluids are obtained, which on injection 

 into animals reproduce the highly characteristic symptoms 

 of the corresponding diseases. In the case of the B. 

 anthracis, at any rate when growing in artificial media, such 

 toxine production is much less marked, a filtered bouillon 

 culture being relatively non-toxic. It is probable, how- 

 ever, that this may not occur when the bacillus is growing 

 in an animal body, for we have often here well-marked 



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 second- 

 ary 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 deutero-albumose results in the 

 formation of peptone. 



