FORMATION OF DEFENSIVE FERMENTS 6/ 



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 modi- 

 fication of the substances has been effected elsewhere 

 to such a degree, that all their disharmonious pro- 

 perties 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 



