Isolation of a lethal toxin from Cortinarius orellanus Fr

The fungal toxin 'orellanine', isolated by Grzymala (10) from Cortinarius orellanus, seems to be a heterogeneous mixture of several toxic and nontoxic substances. We succeeded in isolating a lethal toxin which is sensitive to light and which is striking because of its long latency period. We consider this the main toxin of C. orellanus. Even in extremely high doses of ten times LD 100 mice do not die earlier than 48 hours after application. The paper gives details about the isolation and several properties of this slow acting toxin.