136 Immunity 



point, he recommended his antivenene in all cases of snake-bite, 

 regardless of the variety of serpent. C. J. Martin* and others 

 showed that Calmette was wrong, and that his antivenene was 

 useless in the treatment of the bites of the Austrahan serpents, 

 and the experiments of the author have shown it to be useless in the 

 treatment of the bites of the American snakes. In the venoms of our 

 snakes — the rattlesnake, copper-head, and moccasin — the p6ison 

 is essentially locally destructive in action, the fatal influence upon 

 the respiratory centers being of secondary importance. Flexner and 

 Noguchi,t NoguchiJ and Madsen and Noguchi,§ however, applied 

 Ehrlich's principle to the investigation, destroyed the toxophorous 

 group of the venom molecules, and succeeded in producing an anti- 

 serum useful in antagonizing the active principle — hemorrhagm 

 —of the Crotalus venom. 



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 

 venomous 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 

 Creitell and Landois,** who studied hemoglobinuria following trans- 

 fusion. Subsequent observations were made upon corpuscular 

 agglutination and solution by venoms by MitcheU and Stewartft 



* "Intercolonial Medical Journal of Australia," 1897, ir, p. 537. 

 t "Journal of Experimental Medicine," 1901-1905, vi, p. 277. 



I Ibid., 1906, VIII, p. 614. 

 ■ §Ibid., 1907, DC, p. 18. 



II "Zeitschrift f. ration. Med.," 1869, Bd. xxxvi— quoted by Nuttall in his 

 Blood Immunity and Relationships." 



** "Zur Lehre von der Bluttransfusion," Leipzig, 1873. 



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



