The Cytotoxins 133 



Antivenene is useful in the treatment of cobra invenomation, 

 as Calmette has shown by cases treated in his own laboratory. 

 The serums of Noguchi and others are equally useful in their re- 

 spective invenomations, but the opportunity for successfully em- 

 ploying antivenenes is very small. Few persons are bitten where the 

 remedy is at hand, and the effects of venom of all kinds are so rapid 

 that immediate treatment is required. In India and a few other 

 reptile infected countries, as well as in zoological gardens where ven- 

 omous serpents are kept, and in laboratories where the snakes are 

 kept for experimental purposes, it is well to be provided with a 

 supply of the serum, but it has no wide sphere of usefulness. 



CYTOTOXINS 



Cytotoxins are immunity products that exert a specific destructive 

 action upon cellular antigens. They are essentially cell-dissolving 

 products of immunity. The solution of the cells, of whatever kind, 

 takes place through the complement, native to the blood, fixed to 

 the cells by the specific amboceptor. The complement is pre- 

 sumably always the same and is present in all normal blood; the 

 amboceptor is an "immune body" susceptible of artificial produc- 

 tion or increase, and specifically differs according to the particular 

 cell through whose antigenic activity it was produced. 



Hemolysis. — The phenomena of hemolysis or the solution of 

 erythrocytes, caused by heterologous serums were first studied by 

 Creite* and Landois,t who studied hemoglobinuria following 

 transfusion. Subsequent observations were made upon corpus- 

 cular agglutination and solution by venoms by Mitchell and 

 Stewartf and by Flexner and Noguchi§, and upon the effects 

 upon corpuscles of warm-blooded animals, of the poisonous 

 serum of certain eels by Mosso,|l Camus and Gley,** and KosseLft 

 The serious consideration of the subject was, however, de- 

 ferred until Belfanti and CarboneJJ showed that if horses were 

 injected with red corpuscles of rabbits, the serum thereafter 

 obtained from the horses would be toxic for rabbits; Bordet§§ 

 had shown that the serum of guinea-pigs injected several times with 

 3 to s cc. of the defibrinated blood of rabbits acquired the property 

 of rapidly dissolving the red corpuscles of the rabbit in a test-tube, 

 and Ehrlich and Morgenroth|||| had shown the mechanism of the 



*"Zeitschri£t f. ration. Med.," 1869, Bd. xxxvi — quoted by Nuttall in his 

 "Blood Immunity and Relationships." 



t "Zur Lehre von der Bluttransfusion," Leipzig, 1875. 



i "Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia," 1897, p. 105. 



§ "Journal of Exp. Med.," 1901-1905, vi, p. 277. 



II "Archiv. f. Exp. Path, and Pharmak.," xxv, pp. iii and 135- 



** "Compt. rendu de la Soc. de Biol, de Paris," 1898, p. 129. 



tt "Berliner klin. Wochenschrift.," 1898. 



it "Jour, de la R. Acad. d. Med. de Torino," 1898, No. 8. 



§§ "Ann. de I'Inst. Pasteur," 1898, xii, 688. 



nil "Berliner klin. Wochenschrift," 1899. 



