1026 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 391. 



but the best pharmacologists are agreed 

 that such might be the case only when the 

 person affected is already badly diseased 

 by the use of drugs or otherwise. There 

 is reason for scepticism here, especially in 

 regard to the crazing effect of single doses, 

 but it is highly desirable that the subject 

 be inquired into to find out how little of 

 any one plant can cause insanity in a 

 short time. With the true locoweeds of 

 our "Western prairies I am satisfied that 

 at least several days' feeding is necessary 

 to produce any bad effect. The Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture is at present engaged 

 in an investigation of the curious behavior 

 of these Aveeds. 



The question of disease-producing food 

 presents many important problems closely 

 related to those mentioned above. Aside 

 from the study of locoism there are such 

 problems as the relation of ergotism to the 

 ergot of rye; of lathyrism to the seeds of 

 the species of Lathy riis and Vicia, both 

 commonly represented in our native flora; 

 of the so-called 'bottom disease' of Mis- 

 souri and the seeds of the rattlebox; of 

 githagism to the seeds of the common corn 

 cockle which is abundant in the wheat 

 fields of the middle Northwest, and also to 

 the spring cockle, Vaccaria vaccaria, which 

 is also becoming common in the extreme 

 Northwest, and finally the relation of dry 

 food or of dry moldy foodstuffs to blind 

 staggers or cerebro-spinal meningitis and 

 the so-called cornstalk disease of the middle 

 Western States. 



The toxic theory of disease is by no 

 means a new theory, for Albrecht von 

 Haller advanced it about the middle of the 

 eighteenth century in connection with the 

 extracts of putrefying animals, but it has 

 received proper prominence only lately in 

 connection with the toxalbumins, the first 

 of which to be described was 'echidnin' or 

 'viperin. ' This was extracted in 1843 by 

 by Prince Louis L. Bonaparte, from the 

 venom of vipers. Crotalin, the poison of 



the rattlesnake, was described by Dr. S. 

 Weir Mitchell, an American, in 1860. But 

 it was not until after 1884, when two 

 English chemists. Warden and Wadell, 

 isolated abrin from the seeds of jequirity, 

 Abrus precatorius, that these bodies were 

 closely investigated in plants. Since 1884 

 ricin has been isolated from the castor-oil 

 bean, crotin from a bean of the same fam- 

 ily, phallin from the deathcup fungus, 

 Amanita phalloides; and robin from the 

 bark of the common locust. From many 

 pathogenic bacteria and from some poison- 

 ous spiders similar compounds have been 

 isolated. AH resemble ordinary albumen 

 in being coagulable by heat and all are re- 

 markably poisonous, but death often en- 

 sues only after several days when the 

 poison has been taken internally. After 

 these substances once get into the blood 

 there is no established method of offsetting 

 their effects. There is, however, a most 

 interesting method of preventing and per- 

 haps offsetting their effect which is bound 

 to come more and more into general use. 

 I refer to the use of blood serum and to 

 the various artificial ways of producing 

 immunity or a high degree of tolerance. 

 Ehrlich, a German investigator, first 

 showed in 1891 that animals can be made 

 to endure very large doses of two plant 

 toxalbumins, abrin and ricin, and, in 1897, 

 Cornevin showed that by heating ricin to 

 a temperature of 100° C. for two hours 

 a substance is formed which, when injected 

 two or three times under the skin of hogs, 

 ruminants or chickens, will produce im- 

 munity against the effects of ricin for 

 several months. The essential factor of 

 success in combating these poisons within 

 the body seems to be the development of an 

 increased number of white blood corpus- 

 cles within the body. It has been experi- 

 mentally proven that these corpuscles are 

 not only capable of attacking the destroy- 

 ing bacteria, but also of destroying toxic 

 substances present in the body, the chem- 



