428  Proteids  of  Maize.  {Am  au^'^""" 
serum  developed  freely,  and  when,  after  twenty-four  to  forty-eight 
hours,  they  were  transplanted  on  to  bouillon,  they  throve  and 
proved  virulent. 
When  an  animal  recovers  without  artificial  aid,  this  means  that  at 
length  it  has  become  insusceptible.  The  cure  has  resulted  not  from 
the  dying  out  of  the  virus,  but  from  the  animal's  becoming  insuscep- 
tible to  its  action.  .  On  this  theory  the  introduction  of  the  immu- 
nized serum  only  hastens  the  process.  The  serum,  however,  of 
animals  naturally  insusceptible  is  powerless  to  avert  or  cure.  There 
is,  therefore,  a  difference  between  natural  and  artificial  immunization. 
Still  this  difference  may  be  only  one  of  degree.  Natural  immunity 
is  only  relative.  Immunity  altogether  is  only  relative,  the  natural 
being  weak  and  the  artificial  strong,  but  still  not  absolute.  The 
difference  between  the  natural  blood  serum  of  an  insusceptible 
animal  and  immunized  serum  may  be  only  quantitative,  as  Kruse 
and  Pansini  have  found  that  once  when  they  injected  0-5  ccm.  of 
the  blood  serum  of  a  dog  (naturally  insusceptible  to  the  pneumo- 
coccus)  into  two  mice  twenty-four  hours  before  inoculation  with  the 
pneumococcus,  they  succeeded  in  producing  immunity. 
[These  experiments  are  startling.  When  we  have  discovered 
what  changes  have  taken  place  in  immunized  serum,  wherein  it 
differs,  chemically  or  otherwise,  from  its  former  composition,  then 
we  may  be  able  to  cure  disease  witl  out  using  the  disease  itself  to 
produce  its  antidote.  We  seem  to  be  on  the  brink  of  great 
discoveries. — W.  A.  Stewart.] 
PROTEIDS  OF  MAIZE.1 
By  R.  H  Chittenden  and  T.  B.  Osborne. 
The  proteid  matter  soluble  in  10  per  cent,  aqueous  sodium 
chloride,  but  insoluble  in  water,  may  be  resolved  by  fractional  heat 
coagulation  into  three  distinct  globulins,  two  of  which  have  much 
in  common  with  phytomyosin  and  phytovitellin,  although  they  are 
not  identical  with  those  substances. 
The  globulin  which  gradually  coagulates  when  the  temperature 
of  a  sodium  chloride  solution  of  the  proteids,  prepared  in  the 
manner  previously  described,  is  slowly  raised  to  8o°,  contains  rela- 
1  Amer.  Chem.J., 13,  529-552,  and  14,  20-40  ;  reprinted  from  Jour.  Chem. 
Soc,  June,  1892,  p.  746. 
