38 
by the capillaries. After tearmg a poisoned nerve the toxine disap- 
pears in a few hours in the proximal end, as the rupture stops the 
upper current. The passage of the toxine upward in the spinal cord 
is barred by section of the cord. The period of incubation is much 
shorter when the toxine is injected into the nerve than after subcu- 
taneous or intravenous mjections; injections into the cord have a still 
shorter period of mcubation. 
Their theory of tetanus is that the toxine is probably absorbed by 
the axis cylinder endmgs and reaches the corresponding spinal nerve 
center by that route: from the spinal center it spreads to the corre- 
sponding center in the other half of the cord and outwards, resultmg 
in generalized tetanus. Wlien intoxication is produced through the 
circulation, the poison is taken up by the nerve ends in all parts of 
the body and the disease is not, localized, but general. The antitoxin,, 
unlike the toxme, does not travel by the nerve route, but is found only 
in the blood and lymph. 
Besredka^ showed that the cerebral mass is capable of fixing more 
tetanus toxine than it is capable of neutralizing. The fixative sub- 
staiice of the brain is not then an antitoxic substance in the proper 
meaning of the word. The cerebral mass saturated with tetanus 
toxine recovers some of its primative integrity after the addition of 
true antitoxin, whether this comes from an animal of the same 
species or of a different species. The combination of the bram and 
toxine does not represent, then, a stability comparable to that which 
exists between the toxine and its true antitoxin. The phenomenon 
observed by 'Wassermann and Takaki ought then to be attributed to 
the presence m the cerebral matter of a particular substance other 
than the true tetanus antitoxin. 
Dmitrievsky,^ 1903, found that the brain of animals in which the 
immunization has been of only short duration and of which the 
blood does not possess high antitetanic power does not differ m its 
antitetanic property from a normal brain. The brain of animals 
which were immunized for a long time and of which the blood con- 
tained a large quantity of antitoxin is able to inactivate a much 
larger quantity of tetanus toxine than the brain of normal animals. 
This difference, however, is not considerable, for all the animals * 
injected with the mixture of the poison and of ’brain from a guinea 
pig immunized presented some slight tetanic symptoms. The blood 
of animals of which the immunization has been continued a long 
time contains always more tetanus antitoxin than their brain. 
a Besredka, A.: Be la fixation de la toxine tetaniqiie par le cerveau. Ann. Inst. 
Pasteur, vol. 17, 1903, pp. 138-147. 
& Dmitrievsky, K. ; Recherches sm* les proprietes antitetaniqiies des nerveaux de 
I’animal immunise. Ann. Inst. Pasteui-, vol. 17, 1903, pp. 148-160. 
