Page:EB1922 - Volume 30.djvu/188

154

There was a vast amount of speculation during 1910-20 as to the meaning of totemism, an impartial and full summary of which has recently been published by Dr. Arnold van Gennep (L'Etat Actuel du Probleme Totemique, Paris, 1920). But recent research (and especially the unpublished researches of W. J. Perry, which the present writer has been permitted to see and use) makes it abundantly clear that, wherever it is found, totem- ism has been derived directly or indirectly from the beliefs and practices associated with the ruling classes in Egypt during the Pyramid Age, to which reference has already been made. When one investigates the more primitive forms of totemism and realizes the part played in them by such ideas as matrilineal descent from animals, virgin birth, children of the sun, and the belief in the protective value of animal crests, there can no longer be any doubt as to the derivation of these conceptions from Egypt of the Fifth Dynasty.

In the foregoing account it has been claimed that a very intimate connexion exists between the dual organization and the system of totemic clans. This is not an accidental circumstance, as is often assumed, but is the inevitable result of the conditions under which the dual system arose in Egypt. No doubt this will be regarded as a very heterodox claim; but the facts in proof of it are certain and their meaning quite conclusive. Although the dual organization now survives only in India, Oceania and America, there are marriage customs with a much wider distri- bution, notably in Africa, which point to the influence of this social system in earlier times. In Australia there are very com- plicated systems of rules to regulate marriage: but in many tribes they afford a very striking demonstration of the original connex- ion between the dual system and the totemic clans. The dual chieftainship still persists in Polynesia and New Guinea, as it did in Japan until the Shogunate became virtually extinct a few years ago. According to Geza Roheim (Man, 1915, p. 26) there are very definite traces of the same customs among the Ural-Altaic peoples. He refers especially to the double kingship of the Khazars as being essentially similar to the Mikado-Shogun system of Nippon.

The vast importance of the study of social organization has been emphasized by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers within recent years (Kinship and Social Organization, London, 1913; History of Melanesian Society, Cambridge, 1914), and in his hands the use of the data relating to marriage regulations and relationship has become a most valuable instrument for investigating the problems of ethnology and the diffusion of culture. (G.E.S.)

ANTISEPTICS (see 2.146). During recent years the study of antiseptics has proceeded mainly along two lines attempts have been made to produce more efficient antiseptics for use in the ordinary way by external application, and chemical substances have been elaborated which when injected into the circulation destroy the microbes with which they come in contact. At the same time many studies have been made on the natural antisep- tics by which the body rids itself of infection.

A ntiseptics Naturally Occurring in the Human Body. It is well known that we are constantly coming in contact with disease- producing microbes and yet only comparatively rarely does an infection result. It is also well known that an individual who has been living in a secluded spot which was comparatively free from infection, when brought into a city where infection is common, is very much more liable to infection than an individual who had been living in the city. The latter by coming in contact with the microbes has developed a partial immunity to the common infections, so that, while the stranger will rapidly succumb to the infecting microbe, the partially immune person will be able in many cases to resist it. This immunity is due to an increase in the amount of anti-bacterial substances of the body fluids, and to a better organization for the mobilization of the defences of the body towards the point of attack.

In the simplest cases, where microbes are introduced into the body by the instrument which inflicts the wound, there is very quickly produced a dilatation of the surrounding blood-vessels which increases the blood supply to the infected region. This is followed by an increased transudation of the fluid portion of the

blood from the vessels into the infected tissues, and by an emi- gration from the blood of the white corpuscles or leucocytes, which are amoeboid bodies capable of ingesting the microbes and destroying them.

With some infecting agents such as the typhoid bacillus the fluids of the blood have a great power of killing the microbes, but in most of the commoner infections this power is not so manifest and the leucocytes are the chief agents in their destruction. The quality of the fluids even in these cases is, however, of great importance in preventing the increase of the microbes, and in acting on them so that the leucocytes can readily take them up and complete their destruction. Almroth Wright has shown that in cases of severe infection the power of the blood serum to neutralize tryptic ferments (the antitryptic power) is much increased, and by virtue of this increased antitryptic power the growth of the microbes is greatly hindered in the serum. He has shown also that the alkalinity of the blood is of great importance in retarding the growth of some microbes such as those which cause gas gangrene. He has also shown that the serum will act on the microbes by virtue of its opsonic action so that they can be taken up by the leucocytes and destroyed. These observations on the opsonic power of the serum form the basis for modern vaccine-therapy, which has been of such benefit in combating many infections.

It has been shown that the leucocytes of the blood, and also the leucocytes which exude from the blood into an infected wound and constitute pus, have a very powerful action in destroying the ordinary septic microbes, and these natural antiseptics have the great advantage over the chemical anti- septics that they act mainly on the microbes which are imbedded in the tissues, and not merely on the microbes on the surface of the wound. In all wounds in which an infection has been es- tablished the majority of the microbes are in the tissues well below the surface of the wound, and are quite inaccessible to chemicals applied to the surface.

During recent years research has been directed to the action of chemical antiseptics on the natural defences of the body, and it has been shown that the cells of the body are more susceptible to the chemicals and are more easily killed by them than are the microbes, so that it is clearly impossible to kill by means of one of the ordinary chemical antiseptics the microbes imbedded in the tissues, unless at the same time the tissues are destroyed.

Chemotherapy. The ideal method of using an antiseptic is to introduce it into the circulation so that it reaches every portion of the infected focus and destroys the microbes. For the ordinary bacteria this ideal had not yet been attained in 1921, but remarkable advances had been made in this direction in cer- tain infections. In 1910 Ehrlich prepared an organic arsenical product which when injected into the body rapidly destroyed the microbe of syphilis, and this product, salvarsan, or a later and more easily administered product of somewhat similar constitution, neo-salvarsan, has revolutionized the treatment of this disease. Following Ehrlich, Morgenroth prepared a chemical substance which had a remarkable affinity for the pneumococcus (the microbe which causes pneumonia), and destroyed it in very high dilution, whereas it had little lethal action on other bacteria. It was found that Morgenroth's drug (optochin) lost much of its lethal power on the pneumococcus when injected into the animal body, and also it had certain poisonous effects on the animal tissues, so that in practice it had not been useful. The fact, however, that drugs can be prepared that have a very specific action on one microbe offers some hope that in the future there will be produced chemicals which will be able to destroy the ordinary disease-producing bacteria, without damaging the tissues, and so give us an easy and certain remedy for the common infections.

Chemical Antiseptics for Application to the Wound. Prior to the World War the use of antiseptics in surgery had been largely discarded in favour of " aseptic " methods, in which the aim was to prevent the access of the microbe to the wound. During the war, however, it was found that all wounds were infected with septic microbes, and many antiseptic methods