Various poisons have been separated from cultures of bacillus tetani. Brieger isolated three substances—tetanin, tetano-toxin and spasmotoxin—which in large doses caused tetanic symptoms and even death. Brieger and Fränkel later isolated a toxalbumin which proved of incomparably greater potency. Again, Brieger, Kitasato and Wehl separated what appeared to be an enzyme or diastase which proved 500 times more potent than atropia. This was in the form of yellow, transparent flakes, soluble in water, but which was not destroyed by drying, nor in the dry state by absolute alcohol, chloroform nor anhydrous ether, but which, like the virulent cultures of tetanus, was easily destroyed by acids, alkalies, hydrogen sulphide, or heat. Like the natural virulent product this may be kept unchanged for months on ice, apart from the light, or with the addition of 0.5 per cent. of carbolic acid, or its own bulk of glycerine. It kills the Guinea-pig in a dose of 0.000025 gramme, and the mouse in a dose of 0.00000025 gramme. While the propagation of the bacillus in the animal body appears to be local, and the general tetanic symptoms are caused by the absorption of the poison, it remains to be seen on what organ this directly operates, and what accessory conditions favor its efficiency. In _cases due to inoculation_ the spasms are at first local in the vicinity of the inoculation wound and later become general. Kund Faber shows that there is no gradual transition from the local manifestations to the general, but the latter appear abruptly and in force as a new and independent phenomenon. When we consider further that in inoculation with pure cultures (uncontamininated by pus or saprophytic microbes) the wound often heals promptly, without any sign of remaining local irritation, we may conclude that simple nervous irritation in the sore cannot be invoked as a cause of the early local spasm. It is more likely due to the local diffusion of the poison into the peripheral nerves while the little that has been absorbed is as yet too much diluted in lymph and blood to seriously derange the nerve centres.