426 
Immunity  and  Cure. 
/  Am.  Jour  Pharra. 
i        Aug.,  1892. 
cent,  more  digitogenin  is  thus  obtained,  making  the  entire  yield 
about  30  per  cent.,  while  theory  requires  36  8  per  cent.  This  dif- 
ference is  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  circumstance  that  the  alcoholic 
mother  liquors  from  the  recrystallization  of  the  impure  digitogenin 
obtained  from  the  chloroform  solution  contain  also  a  resinous  sub- 
stance— Schmiedeberg's  digitoresin — which  would  yield  an  addi- 
tional quantity  of  digitogenin  by  further  treatment  with  alcoholic 
hydrochloric  acid,  the  transformation  not  having  been  completed  in 
the  first  operation.  It  is  interesting  to  note  the  fact  that  in  this 
second  transformation  it  is  chiefly  galactose  that  is  produced.  The 
dextrose  appears  to  be  more  readily  eliminated,  and,  therefore,  to 
be  separated  first. 
IMMUNITY  AND  CURE.1 
By  Dr.  Klemperer. 
Behring  and  Kitasato  were  the  first  to  prove  that,  in  animals, 
diphtheria  and  tetanus  could  be  cured  by  treatment  with  the  blood 
serum  of  animals  which  had  been  rendered  insusceptible  to  these 
two  diseases.  By  later  authors  the  same  remarkable  fact  has  been 
proved  with  regard  to  swine-erysipelas,  and  the  disorder  caused  by 
the  bacillus  pyocyaneus. 
Klemperer  has  succeeded  in  adding  two  more  diseases  to  the  list, 
namely,  mouse  septicemia  (described  by  Koch  in  1878)  and  the 
pneumonia  caused  by  Friedlander's  bacillus. 
White  mice  are  exceedingly  susceptible  to  the  bacilli  of  mouse- 
septicaemia,  whilst  rabbits  are  much  less  susceptible.  Mice,  after 
the  injection  of  the  minutest  quantity  of  the  bouillon  culture,  die  to 
a  certainty  in  from  two  to  three  days.  Rabbits,  on  the  contrary> 
can  stand  a  good  few  cubic  centimetres  of  the  fluid  injected  subcu- 
taneously,  and  even  more  when  the  injection  is  intravenous,  without 
showing  any  evident  sign  of  disease.  Still,  in  spite  of  this  natural 
immunity,  the  blood  serum  of  rabbits  proved  powerless  to  cure,  or 
even  clearly  delay  the  progress  of  the  disease  in  mice. 
The  rabbit,  however,  is  not  completely  insusceptible  to  the  bacilli 
of  mouse-septicaemia.  Inoculate  a  rabbit  with  the  virus  in  the  ear  ; 
an  erysipelas-like  inflammation  extends  over  the  ear  to  its  root,  and 
there  stops,  and  the  animal  usually  recovers,  it  is  now  insusceptible 
to  further  inoculation,  the  immunity  holding  good  while  the  inocula- 
\  Berl.  klin.  IVoch.,  March  28  ;  The  Medical  Chronicle,  July,  1892. 
