350 BACTERIAL POISOjSTS. 



They cause local bleedings, destroy the coagulability of tiic 

 blood, and rapidly corrode the capillaries. 



These results of Mitchell and Rrichert, which are 

 given here somewhat in full, have been questioned by 

 WoLFENDEN, who, while agreeing in the main that the 

 poisonous property of venom is due to proteid constituents, 

 regards their peptone not as a true peptone, but rather as 

 one or more bodies of the albumose group of proteids. He 

 likewise regards the globulin of moccasin venom to be 

 some other proteid body. According to him, the cobra 

 venom owes its toxicity to the proteids, globulin, serum- 

 albumin, acid albumin. Occasionally there seem to be 

 present traces of peptone and of hemialbumose. 



Beibger was at first apparently inclined to believe that 

 the action of venoms is due to animal alkaloids, on the ground 

 that these bases are extremely soluble, and hence always go 

 into solution along with the likewise very soluble proteid 

 constituents, and that the difficulty in their isolation lies in 

 the elimination of these proteids. Since then Brieger 

 and Frankel pointed out the poisonous nature of some 

 bacterial proteids, and also showed that cobra poison yields 

 with alcohol a precipitate which gives proteid reactions. 



The proteids of serpents' venom should be compared 

 with the poisonous proteids formed by the activity of the 

 pathogenic bacteria, as well as with similar compounds, 

 the phytalbumoses of castor seeds, jequirity, etc. Possibly 

 similar compounds will be found in croton and other 

 species of ricinus, jatropha, loco-weed, etc. The poisons 

 secreted by certain spiders and fish may be mentioned in 

 this connection. 



Clobz and Gratiolet in 1852 examined the poison 

 contained in the cutaneous pustules of some batrachians, 

 and succseeded in extracting a substanoe which gave a white 

 precipitate with mercuric chloride and formed a platinum 

 double salt. Beyond this meagre information very little is 

 known in regard to the character of these pDisons, though 

 Zalesky, in 1866, announced the isolation of an alkaloid 

 to which he assigned the formula Cj^Hj^NjOj, and which 

 he named salamandarine. According to JJutartre (1890) 



