6l2 
Antitoxins. 
/Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
1  November,  1896. 
seemed  to  predominate.  They  are  illustrious  names  in  English 
pharmacy.  They  loved  and  pursued  honesty  and  truth  as  dominant 
virtues  of  character.  They  were  intelligent,  God-fearing,  and  their 
written  language  is  expressed  in  plain,  mild,  but  forceful  Anglo- 
Saxon.  To  their  honor  be  it  also  said  that  they  were  staunch  and 
loyal  to  the  highest  degree  in  maintaining  the  purity  of  medicines. 
Chemists  Exposed  to  Risk  and  Injury. — That  is  certainly  a  noble 
frame  of  mind  which,  by  the  force  of  will  and  purpose,  takes  from 
misfortune  deplorable  consequence,  and  often  happily  changes  the 
current  of  occupation  into  channels  where  the  individual  can  be 
equally,  if  not  more,  useful  to  society,  and  at  the  same  time  promote 
his  own  happiness.  A  noted  chemist,  losing  an  eye  by  an  unfortu- 
nate laboratory  mishap — an  explosion — betook  himself,  as  a  means 
to  restore  health  and  divert  the  thought  of  his  calamity,  to  the 
country  for  a  partial  residence.  There  he  became,  in  order  to  ac- 
quire rudimentary  knowledge,  an  agricultural  laborer !  Intelligence 
rapidly  advanced  him ;  by  no  tedious  steps  he  adopted  horticulture 
and  fructiculture,  until  he  had  made  a  fame  and  a  pecuniary  success. 
SIR  JOSEPH  LISTER  ON  ANTITOXINS. 
The  following,  taken  from  the  presidential  address  of  Sir  Joseph 
Lister  before  the  British  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science, 
at  the  recent  meeting  in  Liverpool,  may  be  accepted  as  indicating 
the  present  status  of  diphtheria  antitoxin,  coming  as  it  does  from 
such  an  authentic  source  : 
It  was  shown  several  years  ago  by  Roux  and  Yersin,  working  in 
the  Institut  Pasteur,  that  the  crust  or  false  membrane,  which  forms 
upon  the  throats  of  patients  affected  with  diphtheria,  contains  bac- 
teria which  can  be  cultivated  outside  the  body  in  a  nutrient  liquid, 
with  the  result  that  it  acquires  poisonous  qualities  of  astonishing  in- 
tensity, comparable  to  that  of  the  secretion  of  the  poison-glands  of  the 
most  venomous  serpents  ;  and  they  also  ascertained  that  the  liquid 
retained  this  property  after  the  microbes  had  been  removed  from  it 
by  filtration,  which  proved  that  the  poison  must  be  a  chemical  sub- 
stance in  solution,  as  distinguished  from  the  living  element  which 
had  produced  it.  These  poisonous  products  of  bacteria,  or  toxins, 
as  they  have  been  termed,  explain  the  deadly  effects  of  some  mi- 
crobes which  it  would  otherwise  be  impossible  to  understand.  Thus 
