The endotoxin of the meningococcus

The view is advanced that the endotoxin of the meningococcus is one of a group of thermostable intracellular bacterial poisons, and that it is not a specific antigenic toxin. 2. The inability of the “endotoxin” to function as an antigen does not lessen its importance as a pathogenic factor in cerebrospinal fever, since the lesions that are associated with the presence of the meningococcus in the tissues are apparently attributable to the pyogenic action of the intracellular poison.