On immunity with special reference to cell life / by Paul Ehrlich.

Date:
[1900?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On immunity with special reference to cell life / by Paul Ehrlich. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    ments, particularly in the case of ricin, I was able, in the first place, to determine that they yielded an exact quantitative representation of the course of the processes in the living body. The demonstration of this fact formed the basis of a more extended application of experiments of this nature. It was shown that the action of toxine and antitoxinc took place quantitatively as in the animal body. Further, these experiments yielded a striking series of facts of importance for the theoretical valuation of the reaction between toxine and antitoxine. It was proved in the case of certain toxines—notably tetanus toxine—that the action of antitoxines is accentuated or diminished under the influence of the same factors which bring about similar modifications in chemical processes—warmth accelerates, cold retards the reaction, and this proceeds more rapidly in concentrated than in dilute solutions. These facts, first ascertained by means of test-tube experiments, have since been confirmed by Bearing and Knorr for tetanus within the animal body, and by Martin and Cherry in the case of snake-venom.* The knowledge thus gained led easily to the inference that to render toxine innocuous by means of antitoxine was a purely chemical process, in which biological processes had no share. Yet again insurmountable obstacles seemed to present themselves to this conclusion. It must be postulated that in chemical processes the bodies sharing in the action react with one another in definite equivalent quantities. This proposition appeared, however, not to hold in the case of the action of antitoxine on diphtheria toxine. When, in the case of diphtheria toxines of different stocks, that quantity of toxine bouillon which is exactly neutralised by a certain definite quantity of diphtheria antitoxine (the official German immunity unit, as laid down for the control examination of sera), was determined, so that every trace of toxic action was abolished, the figures obtained were not in accord. Of one toxine bouillon 02 c.c, of another 2-5 c.c, were so neutralised by one immunity unit. Such a relation need not have given rise to surprise, because it was well known that the diphtheria bacillus, according to outside circumstances, yields in the bouillon very dif- ferent quantities of toxine. It was therefore allowable to infer that the different quantities of toxine bouillon, which were saturated by one immunity unit, were exact expressions of the toxicities of the various bouillons, or, to use other words, indifferently whether the bouillon was strongly or feebly toxic, the same multiple of the minimal lethal dose would be constantly neutralised by one immunity unit, * Note during revision.—The credit of first drawing attention to theso points belongs to Professor Fraser, who, as far back as 1896, carried out extraordinarily precise experiments on the conditions of neutralisation in respect both of time and of amount of snake-poison and anti-venin (Lecture, Eojal Institution, March 20, 1896).
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