Page:The Harveian oration 1905.djvu/107

 rate we should not hastily accept the favourable reports of interested persons on insufficient data. Of course the beneficial effects upon the blood of good food, fresh air, sunlight, proper exercise, healthy hygienic surroundings, and other general measures must always be duly appreciated. It is practicable to modify the reaction of the blood-serum, and especially to increase its alkalinity for certain purposes. Possibly also its coagulability can be influenced.

Although not directly bearing on the therapeutics of the blood, reference may be made here to two modern methods in which this fluid is utilised. The first is the employment of antitoxic sera, a plan of treatment which, though still in its comparative infancy, has, it seems to me, been already established on a firm basis, both for preventive and active purposes, and from which we may anticipate far more valuable results in the future. Another use of the blood which has come into prominence is to make it a channel for the introduction into the system, by injection into the veins, of particular agents, antiseptic or of other kinds, which circulate throughout the body, and are supposed to have a specific effect upon certain general morbid conditions or processes, or are conveyed to local foci of disease, upon which they are said to produce a beneficial action. While this method of procedure is quite legitimate and not irrational, and may ultimately prove an important aid in treatment, it is one which