• VACCINATION. 377 



an exceedingly interesting fact, for from it we gather that the 

 protective material acts in much the same way as does the 

 poison of the anthrax bacillus itself, showing that the 

 poisonous and the protective agents may be one and the 

 same, in certain diseases at any rate. We have, in fact, if we 

 introduce it at the same tune as the living organism, a 

 cumulative action during the earlier stages, the albumose 

 helping the anthrax bacillus (by additional albumose being 

 formed) to do its work. Where, however, there is an 

 interval allowed between the introduction of the albumose 

 and the inoculation of the virulent material, there is time 

 allowed for the tissues of the body to become acclimatized, 

 as it were, to the action of this special material, so that when 

 the stronger poison is introduced the cells are more ready to 

 deal with it. A very interesting fact in this connection is, as 

 pointed out by Hueppe and Wood, that a certain putre- 

 factive organism, the earth bacillus, which in all morpho- 

 logical characters resembles the anthrax bacillus, and differs 

 only in the fact that it does not give rise to any fatal disease, 

 even in mice, was able when inoculated into mice and rabbits, 

 to afford protection against anthrax that otherwise proved 

 fatal to these animals. These observers concluded from this 

 fact that the saprophytic organism must be closely related 

 to the anthrax organism, and that it formed much smaller 

 quantities of the same specific poison as the disease organisms, 

 so that by its previous introduction these cells were prepared 

 for the attack of the specific anthrax poison, and the disease 

 was checked or modified. They indicate that the relation of 

 the saprophyte to the parasite is merely a quantitative one, 

 having an analogy in the relation that one of our cultivated 

 flowers bears to its wild progenitor. On the other hand Wood 

 and I have observed in a series of experiments that we 

 carried on with the products of the blue pus bacillus that 

 we had a kind of antagonistic influence exerted by the 

 blue pus products on the action of the anthrax bacillus. 

 That the favourable influence exerted by the blue pus pro- 

 ducts in the course of an attack of anthrax was not due merely 

 to an antiseptic action was proved by the fact that the anthrax 

 bacillus could actually grow in the blue pus products, al- 

 though, under these conditions, it was undoubtedly somewhat 

 weakened ; and we came to the conclusion that we had to 

 deal with a kind of biological antagonism acting indirectly 



