Serums, vaccines and toxines in treatment and diagnosis / by Wm. Cecil Bosanquet ... and John W.H. Eyre.

  • Bosanquet, W. Cecil (William Cecil), 1866-1941.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Serums, vaccines and toxines in treatment and diagnosis / by Wm. Cecil Bosanquet ... and John W.H. Eyre. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    34/378 (page 24)
    forming antibacterial matter, the neutralisation of the first doses of poison enables the organism (the animal attacked) to gain time to form its defensive weapons. To use a military simile, we may do much to resist the first assault if we can damp the powder of our antagonists, and so we may enable our own reinforcements to come into action. It is important to remember that by administering antitoxine we only neutralise the free toxine present. That which has already entered into combination with the side- chains of the tissue-cells is practically beyond the reach of the remedy. It is possible that, if there is a very large quantity of antitoxine present, some kind of mass '' action may take place, whereby the toxine may be withdrawn from its combination with the cells and caused to combine with the antitoxine instead; but this is not absolutely certain. Hence arises the urgent need, in giving antitoxine, to give it as early as possible in the disease. For example, in the case of tetanus, it may be too late to make use of antitoxic serum when the symptoms of the disease have appeared, the poison being already closely attached to the cells. Hence many failures and much disappointment in the treatment of this disease. It may be pointed out that so long as the side-chains are attached to the cells they are a source of weakness, as enabling the toxines to attack them, whereas, when they are cast off into the serum as antitoxine, they become a protection. A toxine can only act if it finds appropriate side-chains to which it can attach itself; otherwise it would circulate harmlessly in the lymph. Since it would be better for the cell, from the point of view merely of its relation with toxines, if it had no side-chains, it is supposed that these exist originally for some other purpose; and this is considered to be the assimilation of food-materials, as already suggested. These presumably are taken up by the cell for the purposes of nutrition, in the same manner that toxines are attached, by means of the affinities possessed by the side-chains.