TYBOTOXISMUS. 213 



duced dryness of throat, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. The most 

 of this extract consisted of fats and fatty acids and for some weeks I 

 endeavored to extract the poison from these fats, but all attempts 

 were unsuccessful. I then made an aqueous extract of the cheese, 

 filtered this, and drinking some of it, found that it also was poison- 

 ous. But after evaporating the aqueous extract to dryness on the 

 water-bath at 100° the residue thus obtained was not poisonous. 

 From this I ascertained that the poison was decomposed or vola- 

 tilized at or below the boiling point of water. I then tried distillation 

 at a low temperature, but by this the poison seemed to be decomposed. 

 Finally, I made the clear, filtered aqueous extract, which was 

 highly acid, alkaline with sodium hydrate, agitated this with ether, 

 removed the ether, and allowed it to evaporate spontaneously. The 

 residue was highly poisonous. By re-solution in water and extraction 

 with ether, the poison was separated from foreign substances. As 

 the ether took up some water, this residue consisted of an aqueous 

 solution of the poison. After this was allowed to stand for some 

 hours in vacuo over sulphuric acid, the poison separated in needle- 

 shaped crystals. From some samples, the poison crystallized from 

 the first evaporation of the ether, and without standing in vacuo. 

 This happened only when the cheese contained a comparatively large 

 amount of the poison. Ordinarily, the microscope was necessary to 

 detect the crystalline shape. From sixteen kilograms of one cheese 

 I obtained about 0.5 gram of the poison, and in this case the indi- 

 vidual crystals were plainly visible to the unaided eye. From the 

 same amount of another cheese I obtained only about 0.1 gram, and 

 the crystals in this case were not so large. I have no idea, how- 

 ever, that by the method used all the poison was separated from the 

 cheese." 



To this substance the name tyrotoxicon {ropo^, cheese, and zo^cxov, 

 poison), which had formerly been used to designate the undiscovered 

 active agent in poisonous cheese, was given. During 1887, Wallace 

 found tyrotoxicon in two samples of cheese which had caused serious 

 illness. The first of these came from Jeanesville, Pa., and the symp- 

 toms as reported to Wallace by Doolittle, who had charge of the 

 cases, were as follows : 



Some fifty persons were affected and in the majority of these the 

 symptoms appeared within from two to four hours, and consisted of 

 vertigo, vomiting and severe rigors, varying in their order of appear- 

 ance and severity. Chills and vomiting were the most constant and 

 marked symptoms, and were soon followed by pain in the epigastric 

 region, cramps in the feet and lower limbs, purging and griping pain 

 in the bowels, a sensation of numbness, especially in the limbs, and 

 marked prostration, in some amounting almost to collapse. The 

 vomit at first consisted of the contents of the stomach and had a 

 strong cheesy odor ; afterward, it contained mucus, bile, and, in the 



