IMMUNITY. 185 



one third or more of the contents of the body, from immunized ani- 

 mals, at intervals of time sufficiently long to allow the animal to re- 

 cover to such an extent that its health is not seriously impaired, does 

 not diminish the immunity of this animal as markedly as would be 

 expected if the antitoxin was a modified toxin, and the quantity of 

 the former could not be greater than the quantity of the latter em- 

 ployed in immunizing the animal. (2) If an immunized animal be 

 bled to death, and its vascular system be washed with physiological 

 salt solution until all the blood that can possibly be washed out is 

 removed, yet infusions of certain tissues of this animal contain anti- 

 toxin. It must, however, be granted that the tissues may retain 

 some of the modified toxin in the form of antitoxin after the most 

 thorough washing out of the vascular system. (3) The quantity of 

 antitoxin obtained is not always at least in direct proportion to the 

 amount of toxin used in the production of the immunity, as would 

 necessarily be the case if the antitoxin originated in the toxin. Cer- 

 tainly it must be admitted that if the antitoxin comes from the toxin, 

 the amount of the former produced can never be greater than the 

 quantity of the latter used in its production. In other words, a part 

 can never be greater than the whole. 



It has been claimed by some that toxins can be converted into 

 antitoxins by the action of electricity. In our last edition we made 

 the following statement concerning this claim : " Smirnow has writ- 

 ten quite at length to show that toxins may be converted into anti- 

 toxins by the long-continued action of an electric current. We fail 

 to find in his recorded experiments any justification of his claim. 

 He makes quite a point of the fact that during the continuance of 

 the electrolysis the bouillon becomes more deeply colored at one pole 

 and nearly decolored at the other. Now, the merest tyro in physio- 

 logical chemistry knows that acids deepen the color of beef tea, urine, 

 or any other fluid, the coloring matter of which is derived from 

 hemoglobin. So much for his chemistry. His physiology is worse. 

 When he administers this artificial antitoxin in too large doses he 

 kills his animals ; and of what do they die ? — of diphtheria. He 

 has only modified and reduced the virulence of his diphtheria toxin 

 by the acid generated by the electrolysis of the inorganic salts in 

 the bouillon. Toxins may be convertible into antitoxins, and elec- 

 tricity may be the agent capable of inducing this, but Smirnow has 

 proved neither one nor the other." 



Since the above was written other investigators have reported the 

 confirmation of Smirnow's results, but after a careful study of these 

 reports we see no reason for changing the opinion expressed above. 

 We will investigate only one of these reports. Bolton and Pease ^ 

 passed electric currents through bouillon solutions of diphtheria 

 toxin and found that 5 c.c. of the product from the positive pole 

 ' Transactuyns of the Association of American Physicians, 11, 1896. 



