Bacterial Endotoxin

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Abstract
Since Pfeiffer (1894) first used the word “endotoxin” to describe the toxic substances which he derived from the cholera vibrio and the typhoid bacillus, numerous efforts have been made to demonstrate similar substances in various pathogenic organisms. A review of the voluminous literature which has accumulated on the subject of toxin production by members of the colon-typhoid group of bacteria reveals that the organisms employed in such investigations were grown under cultural conditions which are widely different from those of the animal body, and that, with few exceptions, the toxins thus obtained were studied in animals other than the natural host. It would appear that the more nearly the conditions of the animal body are approximated in artificial culture the greater will be the possibility of the in vivo and in vitro metabolism of the parasite being similar or identical. This consideration seems important in any study of the rôle of bacterial toxins in disease.

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