Chemical Preparations and Drugs. 119 



This purified toxin often proved a hundred times more efficacious with hay-fever 

 patients than did the older form of preparation, and when given to animals as an 

 intravenous injection, the purified preparation showed an extraordinary increase on 

 previous experience in the rapidity with which ant-bodies were formed. 



Kammann subsequently carried out further experiments with the object of again 

 identifying, more sharply than before, the ferments which have been found to exist in 

 the pollen of rye. By this method he was able to detect the presence of protease, 

 diastase, dextrase, catalase and lipase. Lecithinase, tyrosinase, and lactase were 

 absent. 



Compared with the action of rye-pollen in exiting hay-fever, the other toxic 

 principle (the hemolytic) is of less practical importance. Kammann has ascertained 

 that the substance which dissolves the blood-corpuscles is much more sensitive towards 

 chemical and physical influences than is the principle which causes hay-fever. It is 

 considerably weakened by proteolytic ferments, and is destroyed by heat. Its presence 

 may be detected by saturation with a deposit of purified blood-corpuscles, a toxin being 

 then left behind which is solely capable of causing hay-fever. As is the case with 

 the poison of snakes, spiders, etc., the hemolysin only becomes active in the presence 

 of lecithin or similar lipoids. This fact has been established by quantitative experiments 

 by binding amboceptors. Since it has been found that toxin dissolves the blood- 

 corpuscles of hay-fever patients much more rapidly than it dissolves those of normal 

 subjects, Kammann inclines to the view that in the blood of normal individuals lecithin 

 is so firmly combined as to be incapable of grappling with the hemolysin and combining 

 with it, for which reason it is incapable of causing haemolysis. But in the case of 

 hay-fever patients it is held that lecithin is present in the blood in the form of a 

 somewhat loose combination, easily split-up, whereby it is enabled to combine with 

 the haemotoxin and thus to cause haemolysis. The blood-serum of several animal 

 species possesses the activating action of lecithin-solution, but in a still stronger 

 measure, although in a different degree. 



It is well-known that in the course of time several writers have denied to the 

 hay-fever poison the character of a true toxin (t. e. a toxin capable of producing 

 antitoxins). Recent experiments by Dunbar however, to which we have referred on a 

 previous occasion 1 ) have established the correctness of the older view. Further 

 evidence in this direction is afforded by experiments which have been carried out in 

 the Institute of the well-known clinicist, Sir Almroth Wright, by two of his assistants, 

 Noon 2 ) and Freeman 3 ). These investigations have resulted in the widespread adoption 

 of a new mode of treatment of hay-fever. The authors in question have administered 

 hypodermic injections of pollen-toxin solutions to hay-fever patients whose sensitiveness 

 had been quantitatively estimated by the ophthalmo-reaction. The treatment was 

 administered in the autumn and winter, that is to say during the season of immunity 

 from the complaint, the remedy, which was prepared from the pollen of Phleum 

 pratense, L., being given in increasing doses. In a considerable proportion of cases 

 the condition of the patients in the succeeding hay-fever season showed a marked 

 improvement. This improvement manifested itself in the alleviation of the symptoms 

 generally, and it was capable of being measured by the ophthalmo-reaction, which 

 showed a considerable reduction in sensitiveness after treatment. Our Pollantin- 

 treatment therefore represents a passive immunisation (parallel in many instances, 



l ) Comp. Report April 1911, 140. — 2 ) Lancet 180 (1911), 1572. — 3 ) Ibidem 1S1 (1911), S14. 



