It has recently been shown by one of us (W. W. Ford’) that the poisons of the fungus Amanita phalloides, the variety responsible for the great majority of deaths from mushroom intoxication, belong to the group of bacterial toxins. They were thus classified in virtue of their causing characteristic lesions in animals after a definite latent period, and because an immunity may be established towa...

We report here our preliminary results on the use of catalytic antibodies as an approach to neutralizing organophosphorus chemical weapons. A first-generation hapten, methyl-alpha-hydroxyphosphinate Ha, was designed to mimic the approach of an incoming water molecule for the hydrolysis of exceedingly toxic methylphosphonothioate VX (1a). A moderate protective activity was first observed on poly...

It has recently been shown by one of us (W. W. Ford’) that the poisons of the fungus Amanita phalloides, the variety responsible for the great majority of deaths from mushroom intoxication, belong to the group of bacterial toxins. They were thus classified in virtue of their causing characteristic lesions in animals after a definite latent period, and because an immunity may be established towa...

The use of archery to hunt appears relatively late in human history. It is poorly understood but the application of poisons to arrows to increase lethality must have occurred shortly after developing bow hunting methods; these early multi-stage transitions represent cognitive shifts in human evolution. This paper is a synthesis of widely-scattered literature in anthropology, entomology, and che...

In any medium, pure cultures of microbes are free from associative and competitive effects of other microbes as happens in a mixed culture. When two organisms are capable of utilising the same nutrients but are differently affected by environmental conditions such as reaction of the medium, air supply, temperature, etc., the one that finds condition more suitable for its development will grow m...

The concept that pathogenic bacteria might elicit their harmful effects in humans and animals by means of poisons elaborated by these microorganisms in the infected host is almost as old as the notion of pathogenic bacteria itself (William Edward van Heyningen 1950, 1970). The heuristic impact of the concept of bacterial poisons was considerable after the discovery of bacteria and their relatio...