He's given her an injection of anti-toxin for typhoid.
It is regrettable, for, as you know, I am in the midst of that series of tests in regard to the anti-toxin for tetanus.
I can prove that the nurse had access to the laboratory; it would be easy to make a jury believe that she put the toxin in the syringe herself, with the insane idea of making trouble for me.
Unless he held firm against that anti-toxin he was already doomed.
The anti-toxin for it has been discovered, as a matter of fact.
The anti-toxin had done its work, the typhoid was routed.
The needle contained, tout simplement, what one calls in English the pure toxin of typhoid!
Those injections, of anti-toxin they kept talking about .
I concluded from this that, in all probability, antitoxic serum does not modify the toxin with which it is mixed, but that it confines itself to displaying a parallel and opposite action by preventing the noxious effects.
If to a neutral mixture of toxin + antitoxin we add a small quantity of hydrochloric acid, and then heat the mixture at 100° C.
Calmette believes that the anti-toxin may be applied at an even more advanced stage of the disease if it is employed in yet larger doses.
Unlike the bacterial toxins, this venom toxin can stand exposure to considerable temperatures without injury to its activity, and that of the cobra only suffers after it has been submitted to 98 deg.
This is a very remarkable and significant discovery, for hitherto the opinion has been stubbornly held that each toxin requires its specific anti-toxin for its correction.
Another very instructive example of this susceptibility of the nerve-centres for certain poisons is afforded in the case of rats and the toxin of diphtheria.
Each gland, resembling both in size and shape a shelled almond, contains about thirty drops of venom, and in this transparent limpid liquid is embodied a toxin of extraordinary strength.
Of particular interest, however, are some experiments which were carried out to test the traditional immunity towards this toxin ascribed to the mongoose.
Hitherto the preparation of an anti-toxin has been the chief point considered, but Dr.
Antitoxin acts more powerfully when injected along with the toxin than when injected at the same time in another part of the body; if its action were on the tissue-cells one would expect that the site of injection would be immaterial.
He found, however, that if he took the largest amount of toxin which was just neutralized by a given amount of antitoxin, much more than a single dose of toxin had to be added before a single dose was left free.
Attempts to get a pure toxin by repeated precipitation and solution have resulted in the production of a whitish amorphous powder with highly toxic properties.
In other words the substances, which when forming part of the cells fix the toxin to the cells, constitute antitoxin molecules when free in the serum.
It is also to be noted that, as in the case of poisons of known constitution, each toxin has a minimum lethal dose which is proportionate to the weight of the animal and which can be ascertained with a fair degree of accuracy.
Again, in certain cases the toxinhas a special affinity for certain tissues.
It is to be noted that there is no fixed relation between toxin production and bacterial multiplication in the body, some of the organisms most active astoxin producers having comparatively little power of invading the tissues.
In recent years the relations of toxinand antitoxin, still obscure, have been the subject of much study and controversy.
For example, if 100 doses oftoxin were neutralized by a unit of antitoxin (v.
Immunity against toxins also became a subject of investigation, and the result was the discovery of the antitoxic action of the serum of animals immunized against tetanus toxin by E.
According to this view, then, a part at least of the directly toxic substance is produced in the living body by enzymes present in the so-called toxin obtained from the bacterial culture.
It may produce a disintegration of the toxin molecule, or it may combine with it to produce a body whose combining affinities are satisfied.
The quantity of toxin circulating in the blood is so small as to be practically negligible, and the risk of anaphylactic shock attending intra-venous injection outweighs any benefit likely to follow this procedure.
As the toxin accumulates the reflex arc is affected, with the result that when a stimulus reaches the ganglia a motor discharge takes place, which spreads by ascending and descending collaterals to the reflex apparatus of the whole cord.
The separation of the slough is a tedious process, and the patient may become exhausted by pain, discharge, and toxin absorption.
As the toxin spreads it causes both motor hyper-tonus and hyper-excitability, which accounts for the tonic contraction and the clonic spasms characteristic of tetanus.
In a few cases, amputation well above the seat of disease, by removing the source of toxin production, offers the only means of saving the patient.
The toxin acts principally on the nerve centres in the spinal medulla, to which it travels from the focus of infection by way of the nerve fibres supplying the voluntary muscles.
Even early operation does not always avert the fatal issue, because the quantity of toxin absorbed and its extreme virulence are often more than even a robust subject can outlive.
In certain cases the symptoms of traumatic shock blend with those resulting from toxin absorption, and it is difficult to estimate the relative importance of the two factors in the causation of the condition.
The symptoms of collapse are aggravated if toxin absorption is superadded to the loss of fluid.
This implies that thetoxin molecule possesses a chemical group which can combine with a receptor of the cell.
When a toxin is introduced into the body its haptophore group combines with suitable receptors in different cells of the body.
These free receptors constitute, in this case, antitoxin, so-called because they can combine with toxin and hence neutralize it.
The determining test for a toxin is its action on a living cell.
This confirms the hypothesis that a toxin molecule has at least two groups: a combining or haptophore, and a poisoning or toxophore group.
The first injection given is either a relatively small amount of a solution of toxin or of a mixture of toxinand antitoxin.
The toxic or injurious portion of the toxin molecule is likewise spoken of as the toxophore group.
Clostridium botulinum, which causes a type of food poisoning in man, does not even multiply in the body, but the disease symptoms are due to a soluble toxin which is produced during its growth outside the body.
The fact that a so-called toxin acts on several different kinds of cells, possibly indicates a mixture of several toxins, or action on the same substance in the cells.
The chemical composition is unknown since no toxin has been prepared "pure" as yet.
The serum and anti-toxin therapy, which in its fight against the bacillus, lost sight of the first task of medicine, that of fighting the disease, was the logical consequence thereof.
His body cells make an antitoxin which neutralises the toxin or virus of cowpox, he recovers from this light disease, and the antitoxin now remaining in his body prevents for years another successful inoculation with cowpox.
The antitoxin produced in the contest of the body cells against some diseases will not only neutralise the toxin of a particular disease, but it will also neutralise the toxin of a second disease.
For example, if the various bodily cells of a patient dead from diphtheria are examined microscopically, it will be found that the diphtheria toxin has disintegrated the nuclei of these cells.
Anti-toxin isn't a lady, it's a medicine for diphtheria.
Now I am better the Doctor makes me lie in bed because of all that Anti-toxin he put in me, which weakens the heart.
There was absolutely every element necessary to explain Frank's remarks during his delirium; he was a religiously-minded boy, poisoned by a toxin and treated by the anti-toxin.
It is thought that the tetanus toxin will attach itself to the brain cells so injected and thus free the system of this poison.
The use of the antitoxin to the toxin of diphtheria is most efficacious in curing that disease, and the treatment has caused a great fall in the death-rate.
If such a toxinbe introduced every few days in increasing doses, into, e.
Here the toxin produces a violent poison which results in an attack of fever, lasting about six weeks.
The actual germ has not been found, and while there is no doubt that it originates with some specific bacterium, it is probable that the transmitted disease is due rather to the toxin of the germ than to the germ itself.
The distant effects of the toxin are due to absorption, but what controls its action it is impossible to say.
The dose of the injection of toxin is at the commencement about 1/10 cc.
This is now filtered into sterilised flasks, and some favourable antiseptic added to ensure that nothing foreign to the toxin shall flourish, and the flasks are kept in the dark.
This means the amount of antitoxin which will just neutralise ten times the minimum fatal dose of the toxin in a guinea-pig (250 grams toxin to kill on the fourth day).
The details of toxin production and its effect are still open to revision and amendment.
Finally, they came to be looked upon as protective substances produced in the body cells as a result of toxin action, and held in solution in the blood, and there and elsewhere exerting their influence in opposition to the toxins.
Whenever we get a bacillus growing in the body which has the power of producing a toxin albumose, we get fever as a result of that product acting upon the brain.
Illustration: Flask used for the Preparation of the Toxin of Diphtheria] 2.
No, the trouble does not seem to be from germs breathed in, or from germs at all--it is from some kind of germ-free toxin that has been injected or otherwise introduced.
If there is anytoxin in the blood of this dog, the kidneys are naturally endeavoring to eliminate it.
As well as I could I explained to Reginald the nature of the toxin that Kennedy had discovered.
Then," I put in, "the toxin was produced by germs, after all?
The minutes lengthened into hours, as the blood of the poisoned girl coursed through its artificial channel, literally being washed of the toxin from the poisoned bracelet.
It was as if some overpowering toxin were gradually undermining her already weakened constitution.
X THE TOXIN OF DEATH The note of appeal in her tone was powerful, but I could not so readily shake off my first suspicions of the woman.
But I find, when I reach that state, that the best anti-toxin is something that will chase the last case from your brain by getting you in trim for the next unexpected event.
It has been shown by experiment that the symptoms of diphtheria, including the after-effects, are produced by a toxin derived from the micro-organisms which lodge in the air-passages and multiply in a susceptible subject.
Finally, the counteracting effect of antitoxin in preventing the disintegrating action of the diphtheritic toxin on the nervous tissues has been demonstrated pathologically.
The flying pieces of glass injected the poison as by a myriad of hypodermic needles-- the highly poisonous toxin of abrin, product of the jequirity, which is ordinarily destroyed in the stomach but acts powerfully if injected into the blood.
If an animal that is immune to a toxin is bled and the serum collected, the antitoxin in it may be injected into a healthy animal and render it immune.
The serum also can be used to neutralize the toxin in another animal, to a certain extent.
The first is the power to convert the poison of a microbe into a destroyer of that poison--toxin into antitoxin.
Field monitors capable of providing prompt warning of a toxin attack are not available; therefore, personnel must learn to quickly recognize signs of attack, such as observing unexplained symptoms of victims.
The acute poisonings by these toxic agencies resemble the acute, nervous and other exhaustion caused by the toxin of the germs underlying the infections and contagions.
The degenerative power of tuberculosis is not always due to the influence of the germ, or even of the toxin produced by it, but to the state of nerve weakness resultant on the disorder.
To conclude, then: the inheritance of an acquired peculiarity in the experiments of Brown-Séquard can be explained by the effect of a toxin on the germ.
Thus the old distinction betweentoxin and nutrient has now lost its sharpness, but it does not lose all its significance.
It has discovered that fatigue is due not only to actual poisoning, but to a specific poison or toxin of fatigue, entirely analogous in chemical and physical nature to other bacterial toxins, such as the diphtheria toxin.
It has been shown that when artificially injected into animals in large amounts the fatigue toxin causes death.
The most striking part of the argument contained in the brief was the testimony of physicians on the toxin of fatigue.
The fatigue toxinin normal quantities is said to be counteracted by an antidote or antitoxin, also generated in the body.
Probably the length of time that the toxin has had a chance to act determines the permanent damage to the vessel wall.
This toxin may be completely eliminated, if we accept as our criterion the reduction of tension to normal together with the complete return of the affected individual to health.
Clinically the typhoid toxin appears to cause the early production of arteriosclerosis.
This applies only to true arteriosclerosis, not to the condition produced experimentally by the toxin of the typhoid bacillus, for example.
When it has passed into the circulation of normal animals in quantities insufficient to produce death, it excites the formation of an anti-toxin in the same way as a poison of diphtheria stimulates the production of a diphtheria anti-toxin.
A well known case is the toxin of botulism which was isolated and studied by M.
