28 IMMUNE SERA 



equal parts of syntoxoid and toxin that is to 

 say, he believes there are also toxoids which have 

 the same degree of affinity for antitoxin that this 

 toxic has. He speaks of these as " syntoxoids." 



Views of Arrhenius, Bordet and Others. - Bordet 

 and others refuse to accept Ehrlich's views and 

 the whole matter is at the present time under 

 active discussion. Thus the existence or non- 

 existence of toxons has excited a great deal of dis- 

 cussion among investigators. The great Swedish 

 chemist, Arrhenius, has recently given much atten- 

 tion to the toxins and has applied the principles of 

 physical chemistry to the toxin-antitoxin reaction. 

 It is, of course, well known that a solution of a com- 

 pound such as sodium chloride represents not only 

 NaCl in solution, but also sodium ions and chlorine 

 ions. There is a certain amount of dissociation 

 going on hand in hand with a combination of the 

 two components. The degree of this varies with 

 the temperature and the dilution of the substances. 

 Arrhenius believes that the same process goes on 

 with the toxin-antitoxin combination and that 

 such more or less dissociated compounds give rise 

 to the effects Ehrlich ascribes to the toxons. 



Bordet has attempted to explain the toxon 

 phenomena in a different way. He shows that the 

 toxin molecule can combine with antitoxin in 

 varying proportions. One would then assume that 

 the toxin molecule possesses several " binding " 



