Word: toxins
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When Metropolitan started its public-service ads, more than 15,000 people were dying in the U.S. each year from diphtheria. The company soon hammered home the idea that these deaths were unnecessary, thanks to the Schick test and the proof (in 1923) of the value of toxin-antitoxin. Metropolitan officials have had the satisfaction of seeing diphtheria become so rare that they do not need to campaign against it any more. So, too, with typhoid...
Another way to block the cytochrome is to use purified diphtheria toxin. Diphtheria toxin is a protein excreted by diphtheria bacilli, and is a part of the bacterium's cytochrome b, which in turn is an enzyme in that bacterium's cytochrome system...
...diphtheria toxin a cytochrome enzyme, gets into the human body and is mistakenly incorporated into its cytochrome system--the cytochromes of all animals are related but not identical...
Proof of this theory was again found in insects. At the non-growing stage when the cytochrome system is absent (the pupal stage), the insect was found to be wholly resistant to diphtheria toxin. But at other stages, when cytochrome is present, the toxin caused an immediate cessation of growth and ultimately caused death...
Talk with Angels. In his early, field-service days, Dr. Dyer fought bubonic plague in Louisiana and Texas, pellagra in South Carolina, and World War I's influenza in Massachusetts. He standardized scarlet fever toxin and antitoxin, which took much of the panic out of a once-dreaded disease. Dr. Dyer doubts that his preparations are ever used nowadays, for antibiotics have almost finished the job he started...