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Studies of the Properties of Bouillon Filtrates of the Meningococcus: Production of a Soluble Toxin¹

Research Laboratories, Parke, Davis and Company, Detroit, Michigan

J. F. Norton

Bureau of Laboratories, Department of Health, Detroit, Michigan

A. H. Steele

The Wayne County Training School, Northville, Michigan

Abstract

No conclusive evidence has been found in the literature to prove that an extracellular or soluble toxin has been obtained from the meningococcus. The concensus of opinion is that the toxic reaction of this organism is due entirely to a substance or to substances intracellular or endotoxic in nature, and while the term "toxin" has been used rather loosely in the literature to identify the poisonous elements of this organism, it has referred specifically to products endoplasmic in character and not to those commonly classified as soluble toxins.

Zinsser (1) in his Textbook of Bacteriology states, "No soluble exotoxin has ever been conclusively isolated from the meningococcus" and he accounts for the so-called toxin on the ground that "A number of investigators have found that cultures that have been kept in broth long enough for a certain amount of extraction or autolysis to occur, yield toxic products which are in general identical in their action to that of whole meningococci injected in analogous quantities."

Footnotes

¹ Read before the American Association of Immunologists, Cleveland, Ohio, April 1 and 2, 1931.