Page:Defensive Ferments of the Animal Organism (3rd edition).djvu/141

 decomposites, or secretions, are formed, which are in themselves disharmonious. The future must teach us whether quantitative conditions are decisive or not, but it is at least possible that a secretion of quite normal composition may act disharmoniously with the plasma, when it passes into the blood in too large quantities.

In pathological cases, too, we shall be able, by following up a particular disease, to determine the nature of the reciprocal relations in which different organs stand towards each other. It may be noticed, perhaps, that at the beginning only one organ shows signs of dys-function, that another then follows suit, and so on. We shall also be able to make therapeutical studies. If a therapeutical measure should result in the disappearance of the defensive ferments, the therapy would have to be estimated otherwise than if this were not the case.

A large field of study is presented by all cases of degeneration, such as muscular and nervous degenerations, as well as by processes which result in the formation of decaying products of every kind, such as putrefaction of tissues, or absorption of exudates, of extravasations of blood, or of thrombi, &c.

The infectious diseases obviously supply us with an extensive field of study. On the one hand we shall have to decide whether defensive ferments exist that are directed against specific micro-organisms,