Chemical Preparations and Drugs. 67 



in the extracts, but is even a hundred times more efficient. On the other hand he 

 states that treatment of the poison with artificial trypsin leads to the complete loss 

 of the toxic character. How is this contradiction to be explained? Further, how can 

 it be explained, when Kammann establishes that the poisonous efficiency diminishes, 

 in the precipitation and coagulation of the albumin fraction by means of alcohol, with 

 the prolonged action of the precipitant, whilst it was maintained by others that the 

 poison was thermostable. According to the authors Kammann has been misled by 

 the idea to prepare from the pollen a non-nitrogenous (and, therefore, free of albumin) 

 thermostable poisonous component, similarly to what Keyes and Faust have done 

 with the cobra poison, when they prepared a so-called ophiotoxin from the cobra 

 poison; this toxin the latter consider to represent a compound of the salt or ester 

 type with the albumin fraction, which is precipitated by coagulation together with the 

 fraction and can be liberated again by means of chemical reagents. 



On the whole the authors deem it advisable to make use only of native pollen 

 extracts which they consider to be more stable and more active than any isolated 

 and purified special fractions (Galenical principle). 



The analytical data concerning the distribution of nitrogen through the different 

 degradation-products of the pollen-proteins are in this connection of lesser interest. 



Kammann replies to this paper by Heyl and Hopkins, reserving a more detailed 

 critical answer in the technical press, in the following way: — 



In my paper on "The Rye-Pollen" 1 ) I have shown that the rye-pollen consists of a 

 manifold mixture of inorganic and organic substances which, to a large degree, can 

 pass into water or into a diluted solution of salt, either in the dissolved, or in a 

 colloidal condition. Concerned are a series of inorganic salts, oils, fats and waxes, 

 ferments, carbohydrates and protein-bodies of pollen; the latter can further be separated, 

 again by displacement-reactions, i. e., not by chemical attack, into three main fractions, 

 the euglobulins, pseudoglobulins, and the albumins. According to unpublished researches 

 the pollens of the solidago and ragweed are equally complex. Would we not be justified 

 then to abandon the galenical principle, which is admittedly useful and applicable under 

 certain definite conditions, but which here deals in an almost brutal way with bewildering 

 mixtures of substances, the single actions of which are unknown and the total, combined 

 effects of which can hardly be foreseen in all their consequences? With a mixture of 

 substances, moreover, 90 per cent, of which have not the slightest share in the desired 

 immunisation and cure, which perhaps they do not allow to develop, if they do not 

 actually inhibit them? 



I have in one case found direct experimental proof of an antagonistic effect of 

 this kind even in the starch contents of the pollen., In addition to the partial poison 

 proper, which causes the hay-fever, there is in this hay-fever poison a second poisonous 

 component of hemolytic properties. The hemolytic activity (dissolution of blood 

 corpuscles) is less marked, or not observable at all, when the starch present in the 

 pollen of grasses is left in the extract. This is a typical example of a colloidal 

 protection, where the starch acting as protective colloid masks or inhibits any hemolytic 

 action. When the carbohydrates are removed by the fermentative action, I have indicated, 

 the hemolytic component becomes again active. The same is true with regard to the starch 

 contents for the partial poison causing the hay-fever; after suitable biological removal 

 of the starch the poison shows for that very reason its effect magnified a hundredfold. 



'■) Beitrage zar mem. Physiologic and Pathologie, vol. V, No. 7 and 8. 



