The electrical charge of toxin and antitoxin / by Cyrus W. Field and Oscar Teague.

  • Field, Cyrus West.
Date:
[1907]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The electrical charge of toxin and antitoxin / by Cyrus W. Field and Oscar Teague. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [Reprinted from Journal of Experimental Medicine, Vol. IX., No. i, 1907.] THE ELECTRICAL CHARGE OF TOXIN AND ANTITOXIN. By CYRUS W. FIELD AND OSCAR TEAGUE. (From the Research Laboratory of the Department of Health, New York City.) Soon after the discovery of diphtheria antitoxin, several investi- gators attempted to convert diphtheria toxin into antitoxin by the electrical current, and some went so far as to suppose that this method would supersede the costly and time-consuming process of immunizing animals. Smirnow1 inoculated rabbits with half a cubic centimeter of a two to three days old broth culture of diph- theria bacilli, and twenty-four hours later, when the animals were sick, injected 10 cubic centimeters of the anodal fluid, obtained by passing a current for eighteen hours through diphtheria toxin. According to him, the animals were saved by the injections. Bol- ton and Pease2 stated that two cubic centimeters of the anodal fluid obtained from diphtheria toxin neutralized ten minimal lethal doses of the toxin. It is a well-established fact that acids destroy diph- theria toxin more readily than alkalies, and hence it is to be con- sidered that it was the acid at anode which in Bolton and Pease's experiments neutralized the toxin. The latter investigators be- lieved that the electric current caused a rearrangement of the con- stituent atoms of the toxin molecule, so that antitoxin resulted; but they did not determine whether the toxin molecule moved with or against the current by virtue of the charge which it carried. The first to undertake the determination of the electro-positive or electro-negative nature of diphtheria toxin and antitoxin was Romer.3 Romer used a U-shaped tube and allowed the electrodes to dip into the toxin and antitoxin to be investigated. After the current had been passed for a stated interval of time, the fluid was pipetted from both branches of the tube simultaneously and tested 1 Smirnow, Berl. klin. Woch., 1892, xxxii, 645. 2 Bolton and Pease, Jour, of Ex per. Med., 1896, i, 537. 3 Romer, Berl. klin. Woch., 1904, xli, 209.