Abstract
The present study is a continuation of the work published by Larson and Nelson 1 on the effect of castor oil soap upon bacterial toxins. It was shown that sodium ricinoleate possessed the property of detoxifying soluble toxins as well as endotoxins.
In the present paper an attempt is made to analyze the mechanisms of the detoxifying action of soaps, and further, to study the antigenic properties of toxins which have been thus detoxified.
The work was begun by subjecting diphtheritic toxin and tetanus toxin to the action of the sodium salts of a large number of fatty acids as: ricinoleic, oleic, stearic, palmitic, myristic and lauric acids, and two acids with uneven numbered carbon chains, ennenoic and hendecenoic acids. Our procedure was to mix the toxin with an equal volume of a one per cent soap solution except in those cases where a one percent solution of soap gels, in which cases weaker solutions were used. It was found that the soaps of oleic, stearic and palmitic acids had no detoxifying action whatever on bacterial toxins. The soaps of lauric, myristic, ennenoic and hendecenoic acids possess some detoxifying action upon toxins, but do not compare with sodium ricinoleate in detoxifying properties.
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