Abstract
A number of strains of Bacillus botulinus isolated both abroad and in this country represent a fairly uniform group in so far as their cultural characteristics and the symptoms produced by their toxin are concerned. However, in respect to neutralization of toxin by antitoxin there exist two sharply distinct groups of this organism, thus suggesting that in fact we are dealing with two distinct antigens.
In this attempt to find a method by which the existence of two antigenic varieties within the group of Bacillus botulinus could be established without the recurrence to the toxin-antitoxin test we found that neither the complement fixation nor the precipitation tests give satisfactory results. The agglutination test, however, offered a ready means for grouping as the results obtained with this test were in accord with those obtained by toxin-antitoxin tests. The agglutination test has permitted us to classify also such strains of Bacillus botulinus which have lost their toxicity under the conditions of test tube cultivation. As a control in all the above experiments we included a strain of Bacillus sporogenes and found that contrary to the statement in the literature all but one of the strains obtained by us from different laboratories in this country are free from Bacillus seorogenes contamination as judged by the above serologic tests.
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