The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-06-11
BILE AS AN ANTITOXTN.
Recent Investigations Concerning Its
 Properties

Among the means of protection pos
 sessed by the organism against infec.
 tious diseases and toxic agencies, nt-
 oratory investigation has recently
 placed the bile; but, as is true of st
 many other facts in medicine, emplrl,
 knowledge anticipated scientific discov.
 cry. Thus. the natives of Africa, ac.
 cording to Fraser, have long known
 the value of serpents' bile as m anti
 dote in the treatment of snake bites
 and among the natives of Bengal it las
 been custom, centuries old, to employ
 the liver of mad dogs as or ltective
 against hydrophobia In letter to the
 Gazette Hebdomadaire de Medecln," a
 French traveller writes as follows:
 About three months ago a mad dog
 bit six or seven persons, among whom
 were two of my porters. I ordered bits
 of iron to be heated white hot for eau
 terizing the wounds, but the natives said to me with laugh, o, Sahib, that 1 is nothing; we have an excellent rem
 edy for hydrophobia; you shall sec
 The mad dog approached again; one of ! the natives took a club and killed the animal. Another opened it's body, took
 
 into small bits. and gave them to he wounded man. who ate them raw. There is no more danger they said to me. As I remained incredulous, they brought me to young man who bore | large scars on his legs. He had been
 bitten five years before by mad dog, but had eaten a raw piece of the nl- mal's liver, but had felt no i'll effects
 These events took place in March and 1t is now July B. The wounds ere cured and all the men continue to do well. Our natives even 1ssert that their remedy will cure man after he has been attacked by the disease"
 Wehrmann found by experimen. that bile destroys the toxic properties of eel serum and of snake venom. but that it apparentlN has no protective or curative propertiss.. The active anti toxic principle of bile was found ty Phsax to be the taurocholate, and especially the glycocholate, of sodium.
 The important experiments of Fraser are we'll known. He found that the bile of both poisonous and on-posonous serpents counteracts the toxic effects of snake venom. Oxgall has similar prop critics, but was estimated to be seventy times weaker than the bile of poisonous serpents The bile also neutralizcs dlphtherla toxin, but, as Fraser's OK periments show, only when it comes from the same species of animal as that injected with the toxin.
 Perhaps the most interesting obser vation connected with the antitoxc properties of bile are those made by Koch in his study of the rinderpsst in South Africa. 1t was found that cattle can be immunized when injected with the bile of animals that have died with on the fifth or sixth day of | the disease. The protection conferred 1 lasts for period of four months. Kolle | and Turner have, however, improved | upon Koch's method of immunization | By the injection of virulent rinderpest blood and of serum from animals that | have recovered from the disease tnoy | have obtained an antitoixc serum that | is much more powerful than bile. Ne'le | is of the opinion that the antitoxic r of bile are not due Q the | presence in it of any soluble poison or but that with the pile are | introduced ro-orRanism of the dis ease which grow at the point of inocu- lation. their dissemination being pre- vented by the action of the bile on the tissues. In other words the is active, analogous to that conferred by vaccination against an- .hrax, and not passive, as is the inn obtained by means of anti .oxins against diphtlartia and .etanuS.
 Vincenzi found that the bile of ani- nals suffering from tetanus is able to lntagonize a certain amount of tararus oxin while the bile from healthy ari l nas is devoid of such property. That he bile has also the power of neutra- izing certain poisonous alkotiods was hown by Arnold. This investigator in- ected a series of frogs with varying loses of strychnine, and recorded the ,nset of convulsions, the severity luration and the time within which leath occurred. Another seri es of rogs were injected with the same loses of strychnine mixed with fresh rogs' bile: a third with similar doses f strychnine mixed with oxgall. and
 fourth with bile alone. The froEs hat had received the strychnine mixed with bile survived doses of strychntne yhich were surely fatal when given lone. The symptoms appeared later, nd were less severe. The fresh frogs ie was more active then the OK bile. lone of the frogs died after the injec- ion with bile alone.
 In connection with the subject of the action of bile, it is interesting ) note that the theory, so long main lined, that bile in the intestines ex- rts antiseptic properties, is not sup orted by recent investigations. Albu a nd others have shown that the reput- o ti-putrefactive property of pile is r myth. Mosso likewise demonstrated s lat bile has no power to arrest putre- lction, although in his experiments it l 'emed slightly to hinder the growth A bacteria. Whatever inf1uence the He possesses upon putrefa ct:ve 'ocesses in the intestine is indir ct.- rom American Medicine. IT