THE NATUKE OF TOXINS 191 



Immunity). Anaphylaxis essentially consists in the develop- 

 ment under certain circumstances in an animal of a hypersensi- 

 tiveness to foreign albuminous materials -Which in themselves 

 are not toxic. Effects of the gravest kind may be produced 

 during this period of hypersensitiveness, and it has been thought 

 that some of the phenomena of an infectious disease, e.g., the 

 intervention of an incubation period before symptoms occur, may 

 be accounted for by the gradual development of hypersensitive- 

 ness to the proteins of the invading bacteria. It may be said 

 here that the effect seen when horse serum is injected into a 

 rabbit during its hypersensitive stage to this substance bears a 

 striking resemblance to what is seen in natural infection in man 

 by the cholera vibrio. 



The phenomena of any bacterial disease may thus in reality 

 be due to very different and complex causes. 



The Nature of Toxins. — There is comparatively little known 

 regarding this subject. The fact that many exotoxins are 

 precipitated along with albumoses suggested the idea that they 

 are formed from the medium in which the bacteria are growing 

 by processes analogous to those of gastric digestion. Sidney 

 Martin found that albumoses l and peptones were formed by the 

 action of certain pathogenic bacteria, and that the precipitate 

 containing these albumoses was toxic. A similar digestive 

 action has been traced in the case of the tubercle bacillus by 

 Kuhne. 



Further evidence that bacterial toxins are either albumoses 

 or bodies having a still smaller molecule was adduced by C. J. 

 Martin. This worker, by filling the pores of a Chamberland 

 bougie with gelatin, obtained what is practically a strongly 

 supported colloid membrane through which dialysis can be made 

 to take place under great, pressure, say, of compressed oxygen. 



1 In the digestion of albumins by the gastric and pancreatic juices, the 

 albumoses are a group of bodies formed preliminarily to the production of 

 peptone. Like the latter they differ from the albumins in their not being 

 •coagulated by heat, and in being slightly dialysable. They differ from 

 the peptones in being precipitated by dilute acetic acid in presence of 

 much sodium chloride, and also by neutral saturated sulphate of ammonia. 

 Both are precipitated by alcohol. The first albumoses formed in digestion 

 are proto-albumose and hetero-albumose, which differ in the insolubility 

 of the latter in hot and cold water (insolubility and coagulability are 

 quite different properties). They have been called the primary albumoses. 

 By further digestion both pass into the secondary albumose, deutero- 

 albumose, which differs slightly in chemical reactions from the parent 

 bodies, e.g., it cannot be precipitated from watery solutions by saturated 

 sodium chloride unless a trace of acetic acid be present. Dysalbumose is 

 probably merely a temporary modification of hetero-albumose. Further 

 digestion of deutero-albumose results in the formation of peptone. 



