The Toxins and Venoms and Their Antibodies

by M. Emm. Pozzi-Escot

They are the direct products of life, and do not result, as was formerly believed, from a more or less profound modification of the more or less complex albuminoids that serve as a food for the various species of microbes, or for the cellular elements.

The vegetable toxins are less numerous than the animal toxins. They are met with, nevertheless, in almost all mushrooms which are reputed or known to be toxic; the seed of the castor plant contains a very toxic vegetable albuminoid, as is likewise the case with Abrus precatorius (jequirity-bean), and certain others.

The true physiological toxins occupy a very important place in the realization of the conditions that govern health, sickness, and death.

We will see later on that they are met with in quite large number in the bladder, whence they are voided in the urine. Their number varies considerably, according to diverse influences (waking, slumber, eating, fasting, fatigue, oxygen, brainwork, health, disease, etc.). It is necessary here to observe that the renal system serves for the purification of the entire organism, and that in the case of normal life we will find in the renal system a large portion of the products of the cellular secretion of the organism, and among the number there are found, as we know, a certain number of alkaloidal bases. We will take up later the subject of urinary toxicity.

Autointoxications.—The toxins are also encountered, and often in some number, in the muscular tissues and in the blood, particularly in those of batrachians, mureids, and saurians. In the organism these toxins, developed by the activity of the various cells, may cause autointoxication whenever, for one cause or another, their normal elimination ceases. "Although there are an infinity of diseases," remarked Prof. Bouchard, "there are but a few ways of becoming ill." Of these ways that of autointoxication is the most frequent. "What else is it, then," says Prof. Charrin, "in the last analysis, but to die from affections of the kidney, the liver, the heart, the lung, etc., if it be not to succumb because of the lack of oxygen, the accumulation of carbonic acid, the influence of the numerous urinary poisons, the action of acids, of salts, of biliary pigments, or the effect of noxious principles, which the hepatic cell must normally destroy or at least attenuate."

These autointoxications, always due to poor elimination of toxic principles, toxins formed in very great number in the organism, and which the normal modes of evacuation or destruction do not eliminate, are always found to be the cause of all diseases, even those that are manifested by attacks of the cerebro-spinal axis, and that exhibit variously mania, insanity, symptoms of hyperexcitability, etc.

These autointoxications are controlled by the nervous system, and the latter alone is the cause of a larger number of maladies than is generally believed; in fact, if the mechanism of nutrition be reduced to its most simple elements, it will be seen to consist of the penetration of the foods, of the plasmatic principles, to the cells; of their transformation within the interior of the cells, and finally the rejection of all the matter that could not be utilized. It is the nervous system that commands or dominates this mechanism, that controls the taking-up of assimilable elements and the elimination of toxic principles, the fruit of assimilation or disassimilation, and in such a manner, in fact, that this same nervous system can, at its will, cause starvation, or intoxicate.

The marvelous cures obtained by magnetic methods are due to no other causes than favorable changes in the nervous system.

General Mode of Action.—The toxins, of whatever kind, always behave like diastases, in the sense that their definite action appears to be absolutely independent of their mass, and that imponderable quantities suffice to cause serious morbid affections and profound modifications in nutrition.

Koch has shown that tuberculin is capable of affecting 60 trillion times its weight of the living human being. According to Vaillard one milligramme of tetanus toxin will kill a horse weighing 600 kilos. These two examples show what an enormous power the toxins possess.