488 
WM. S. GrOTTHEIL. 
The cholera bacillus produces penta-methyldiamin, tetra- 
methyldiamin, methyl-guanidin, and other poisions. These 
cause the profuse diarrhoeas, the uncoagulability of the blood, 
the algidity and muscular spasms, the peculiar odor of the 
dejecta and of the breath. 
The microbic cause of tetanus is proven to be present 
everywhere in nature. Tetanin has been gotten pure from 
the newly amputated arm of a tetanic patient, and is one of 
the four poisons that the bacillus produces and that cause the 
dreadful symptoms of that malady. 
The anthrax bacillus produces ammonia and the poison 
methyl-guanidin. 
But besides these admittedly bacterial diseases, there are 
others more mysterious and of unknown origin. They are 
caused by some chemisen of the body, of the nature of which 
we are ignorant. In some of them products have been found 
that point immediately to microbic activity ; organic poisons 
that are doubtless due to the life-action of some yet unknown 
organism. Brieger has studied them in cystinurea and other 
nutritive diseases, and also in leukaemia and the blood 
changes. 
Thus the action of the micro-organisms on the body is due 
to the poisons they produce, and the question of infection by 
any given kind depends on the susceptibility of the organisms 
that they attack. This susceptibility is greatly diminished by 
one dose of the poison, and hence the success of the various 
vaccine experiments that have been made. 
But so long as we vaccinate with the organism or virus 
itself, or modifications of it, our work must necessarily be un¬ 
scientific and inexact. Along with the specific poison, the 
ptomaines or toxine, we introduce into the body an unknown 
number of others, and also the micro-organisms themselves. 
We need only inoculate the one poison against whose more 
virulent attack in larger and more concentrated dose we de¬ 
sire to protect the organism. This we shall be able to do 
when we can isolate and prepare in chemical purity the 
ptomaines and the toxines. Then will medicine—the science— 
begin to purge itself of the old and merited reproach of em¬ 
piricism. 
