I30 MICRO-ORGANISMS AND DISEASE [CHAP. 



at first, vomiting, purging, spasms, great fall of temperature, 

 collapse, and death, has been known since Panum, Schmidt, 

 Billroth, and others ; this constitutes what is now known as 

 sapraemia, or septic or putrid intoxication caused by the 

 ptomaines of Selmi and Brieger. And further, research has 

 shown that all the pathogenic bacteria, that is those which 

 when introduced into a suitable body multiply therein, 

 produce infection and cause a series of symptoms charac- 

 terising the particular infectious disease, do so by virtue 

 of their producing specific chemical poisons, toxins, within 

 the body. Not only in the animal body, but also in 

 artificial cultures, do these specific bacteria elaborate these 

 toxins, which, if injected into an animal, set up the same 

 symptoms of disease as if produced by the multiplication 

 of the microbes within the animal. These toxins have 

 been investigated for a series of specific microbes : septi- 

 caemia (Roux and Chamberland), typhoid fever (Brieger), 

 diphtheria (Roux and Yersin, Sidney Martin), tetanus 

 (Behring and Kitasato), anthrax (Hankin, Sidney Martin), 

 and others. These toxins are considered by Fraenkel and 

 Brieger to be of the nature of proteids and are called 

 tox-albumins, while Roux has given good evidence that 

 some (particularly the diphtheria toxin and the tetanus 

 toxin) are more of the nature of ferments. Hankin has 

 shown that in anthrax a poisonous albumose is formed, 

 while Sidney Martin has obtained, besides poisonous 

 albumoses, certain alkaloidal bodies having poisonous ac- 

 tion. In diphtheria Sidney Martin obtains alike from diph- 

 theria cultures and the diphtheritic membrane and spleen 

 in human diphtheria, besides a poisonous ferment (the 

 toxin), also albumoses, alkaloidal and acid bodies acting 

 poisonously. The fact is then established that the specific 

 or pathogenic bacteria produce in artificial nutritive media, 



