'intracellular' poisons 125 



clinical symptoms, when injected intraperitoneally, Klein 

 drew the inference that all these bacteria contain the same 

 kind of poisonous body within their protoplasm. This 

 body he termed the ' intracellular ' poison, which must not 

 be confused with the ' toxins ' produced by the metabolism 

 of the same organisms as the result of their growth in 

 artificial media or the animal body. In the case of anthrax, 

 the pathogenic properties of this bacillus may be due to two 

 poisons : the metabolic products, which pervade the system ; 

 on the other hand, the protoplasm of the bacilli, which 

 contains the ' intracellular ' poison. The tubercle bacillus 

 is also concerned with two kinds of poisons. But neither 

 tetanus nor diphtheria is due to the action of ' intracellular ' 

 poisons; in these diseases the specific organisms remain 

 limited to one locality of the body, where they produce 

 their toxins, which when absorbed into the system give rise 

 to the symptoms characteristic of one or the other disease. 

 Sero-Therapy. — The results of the outcome of bacterio- 

 logical research in the past have been, generally speaking, 

 towards the promotion of the principles of preventive 

 medicine, but the recent discovery of, and the application 

 of, antitoxins in combating disease must be ranked as the 

 greatest advance of the century in the realm of curative 

 medicine. 



It was pointed out by Fedor and Nuttall that anthrax 

 bacilli were killed by admixture with fresh-drawn blood. 

 Bouchard found that, although normal blood could be used 

 to cultivate the Bacillus pyocyaneus, the serum of a rabbit 

 which had been rendered immune to this organism will 

 attenuate or positively destroy the pathogenic characters 

 of the bacillus. Jasuhara and Ogata obtained similar 

 results with anthrax bacilli. Similar researches were made 

 by Emmerich and Mastbaum with the bacillus of swine 

 fever, and they found that the blood serum of an immune 



