Page:Defensive Ferments of the Animal Organism (3rd edition).djvu/92

 of substances out of harmony with the species, new properties appear also in the cells of the body, and that the latter undertake likewise the decomposition of these disharmonious substances. In a certain sense each individual cell would act in the presence of the disharmonious material exactly in the same way as an unicellular organism, and fight them to the extent with which it is provided with the necessary weapons—the ferments—that enable it to make a successful attack on the substrate. Like primitive organisms, too, it is able to protect itself against the penetration of these substrates by means of the constitution and quality of its walls, and so to wait until the modification of the substances has been effected elsewhere to such a degree, that all their disharmonious properties have disappeared, and only an indifferent product remains.

Finally, it may be that the whole problem of anaphylaxy will not be resolved by purely chemical considerations only. Why should not disturbances originating from dislocations of osmotic equilibrium, or activities of special ions, be taken into account, and associated with the other observed phenomena. (Cf. on this point Lit. 13.)

The more widely the limits of these problems are extended, the more probable does it become that the experimental testing of all possibilities will put us on the proper road for an explanation of the phenomena