DEFENSIVE FERMENTS OF THE ANIMAL ORGANISM 3! 



micro-organisms, for the purpose of limiting their 

 sphere of action or of subduing them, no more con- 

 vincing picture could be presented to us of the 

 synthesizing capacities of the animal organism. 

 Even the full-grown organism is able at any moment 

 to completely equip a vast army of cells and endow 

 them with special functions. 



If the ingested food materials, with .their peculiarly 

 disharmonious structure, were passed directly into the 

 circulation and handed over to the cells in this state, 

 then the organism would be subjected to continual 

 surprises. The control of its metabolism would be 

 utterly impossible under such conditions. Some- 

 times one substance, sometimes another, would pre- 

 dominate in the circulation, and the blood would be 

 correspondingly affected sometimes in one way, 

 sometimes in another. The cells would have to dis- 

 integrate all these disharmonious materials. In such 

 _> 



a case they would have to be provided with all sorts 

 of arrangements for the continual modification of 

 these materials. Each separate cell of an organism 

 would be in exactly the same state as a unicellular 

 organism. Just as these have to make a selection 

 from amongst the disharmonious substances by which 

 they are continually bathed, so, too, would the cells 

 of the body have to pick out the substances they need, 

 according to the conditions presented. Not only 

 would the work of the single cells be enormously 



