POISONOUS ALKALOIDS AND ALBUMINOIDS. 363 



of this second group. To this group also belong Mytilotoxine, CjHisNOa, 

 Typhotoxine, C^H.^NOj, and Tetanine Ci3H2sNj04, which appears to be 

 really a double pyridine molecule, and is therefore probably a mixture, as are 

 also a number of the others above mentioned. 



Most of these substances are found to be associated with 

 the decomposition of dead material by micro-organisms, but 

 it has long been known that substances similar in many 

 respects (some of them of an exceedingly poisonous nature) 

 are formed in the body of the living subject, resulting from 

 the purely physiological nutritive changes in the protoplasm 

 of the various organs and tissues in the body ; they are 

 in fact excretory products which must be got rid of, and 

 which if retained interfere, in some cases very materially, 

 with the vitality of the protoplasm. These were named 

 leucomaines by Gautier to distinguish them from the 

 ptomaines ; they are fully described in physiological text- 

 books with the uric acid and creatinine groups of sub- 

 stances, to one or other of which they belong as far, at all 

 events, as their chemical composition is concerned. Some 

 of these leucomaines are, as we have said, exceedingly 

 poisonous, and when retained may give rise to very serious 

 toxic symptoms. Brieger and others, however, deny that 

 any such bodies are formed or at any rate have yet been 

 found in the tissues of the living body or that they owe their 

 existence to the tissues. They consider that they are simply 

 absorbed from the intestinal canal where they are formed by 

 bacteria. 



In 1887 LofHer, when examining the products of a pure 

 culture of the diphtheria bacillus that he had obtained, found 

 that the fluid from which all the organisms had been 

 removed by filtration through a porous porcelain cylinder, 

 when injected into a guinea-pig gave both the local reaction 

 and the paralytic symptoms that were obtained when the 

 organism itself was introduced into the subcutaneous tissue. 

 In order more readily to determine the nature of this material, 

 he added to -a pure culture of the organism a quantity of 

 glycerine ; this when filtered and dropped into absolute 

 alcohol gave a floculent precipitate which could be freely 

 washed with alcohol without passing into solution, but on the 

 addition of water it was again dissolved. It could be again 

 precipitated by alcohol, and after the passing of carbonic 

 acid gas through the precipitate, it retained a certain toxic 



