ANAPHYLAXIS 239 



The antibody is named by Richet toxogenine, and the new 

 poison, apotoxine. He therefore imagines anaphylaxis after the 

 formula : Toxogenine + Congestine = Apotoxine. 



He considers that the apotoxin results from the action of 

 the two substances on each other, the one, congestin, introduced 

 from without and non-toxic in the dose employed for the test 

 injection, the other, toxogenin, non-toxic, prepared by the 

 body itself as a result of the first small injection of congestin. 

 In a similar way we have emulsin and amygdalin acting 

 together to produce hydrocyanic acid. 



At first the existence of this toxogenin was hypothetical, but 

 experiment has in two ways proved its real existence — i. When 

 a normal animal is injected with the blood of a sensitized 

 animal, it becomes anaphylactic without any period of incubation, 

 i.e., there is passive anaphylaxis. 2. Richet has several times 

 succeeded in demonstrating the reaction with crepitin in vitro. 

 The mixture in a test-tube of anaphylactic serum and poison, 

 when injected after incubation, produces immediate anaphylactic 

 effects : the test-tube contains both the antibody and the 

 antigen. 3. The toxogenin does not exist only in the blood ; it 

 is also to be found in the brain tissue. By mixing crepitin with 

 brain substance (freed from blood) or even with the alcoholic 

 precipitate from the brain substance of an anaphylactic animal, 

 immediate anaphylactic symptoms can be produced in a fresh 

 animal : there is thus " cerebral anaphylaxis " in vitro. There is 

 thus antibody present in the nerve-cell and capable of reacting 

 with the antigen at the moment of the anaphylactic shock. 

 It is this very reaction which Besredka regards as the 

 essence of the anaphylactic shock, which appears to him to be 

 eminently a cerebral phemonenon. 



According to Richet those animals which have received 

 an anaphylactising toxin become from this sole fact more 

 sensitive to other poisons. The injection of an antigen, for 

 example crepitin, renders an animal more sensitive to toxic 

 action of other kinds, for example to that of apomorphine, 

 although the increase of sensitiveness is particularly directed 

 towards the antigen itself. There exists therefore, it would 



