Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/153

Rh germicidal and antitoxic substances in the body are originally derived from certain ductless glands, the immunizing mechanism in question comprising the "adrenal system" (adrenals, pituitary and thyroid). He holds that the adrenal secretion mobilizes zymogens in the body, endowing them with their ferment-activities, that secretin is "adrenoxidase," that enterokinase is adrenoxidase plus nucleo-proteid, that the pituitary body has no internal secretions, but is the general and governing center of the sympathetic system and of all vegetative functions, that, as an immunizing center, it is the homologue of the "test organ" of mollusks and other invertebrate animals, and that the body at large is protected from disease by an "auto-antitoxin" composed of the internal secretions of the adrenal (adrenoxidase; Ehrlich's amboceptor), of the pancreas (trypsin; Ehrlich's complement), of the spleen and leucocytes (nucleoproteid), and of the thyroid and parathyroids (thyroiodase; Wright's opsonins). Upon this theoretical substructure, which was arrived at by deductions based upon clinical and experimental data, including some of his own, the work of a mind of mathematical cast, Sajous has erected a complete system of medicine, connecting his ideas with all known diseases and their treatment.

Without presuming to discuss the merits of these different views, it may be said that their very complexity indicates that present knowledge is in a state of flux and that only the surface of the subject has been scratched so far. We can not object that "facts not opinions" are wanted here, for the collective mass of observations and experiments is enormous. But all recent investigations, those of Abderhalden on the protective ferments of the body, for instance, indicate a general reaching out for a larger correlation or synthesis, which shall weld so many seemingly contradictory observations into a harmonious whole. In 1912 von Behring included as "agents of infection," pathogenic microorganisms and their toxic products and the poisons produced by animals (venoms, etc.) and the higher plants (abrin, ricin, ergotin, etc.), and it would seem even reasonable to include in this group certain mineral poisons like arsenic or lead, the action of which mimics an infectious disease. In February, 1914 von Behring made another generalization of equal sweep, in which he brings such concepts as idiosyncrasy, susceptibility to disease, diathesis, anaphylaxis and super-sensitiveness to toxins into one and the same category. The Viennese clinicians associate diathesis with the ductless glands. Sajous associates the ductless glands with immunity from disease. This is all that can be affirmed of present theories of the subject.