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AN^ROBIC TREATMENT OF WOUNDS 225 



powerful protease contained in myelogenous leuco- 

 cytes, and, further, the increase in peptolytic enzymes 

 obtained in the blood serum by albuminous inocu- 



J 



lations, one cannot avoid a suspicion that we may 

 here be dealing with part of the mechanism of natural 

 immunity, and that the various protective substances 

 met with in specific sera are no more than various 

 stereometric modifications, specific to certain substrata, 

 of a proteolytic enzyme of normal blood ; in which 

 case we might produce passive immunity at once, in 

 septicaemias, by the intravenous inoculation of widely 

 active proteoclastic enzymes of one sort or another, 

 such as the filtrate from Reading bacillus cultures 

 rather than by the roundabout method of introduc- 

 ing the specific enzyme in the serum of another 

 animal. 



The same principles may be extended to cover the 

 case of enzymic or veninous assaults upon the system, 

 since it appears probable that a protein group is an 

 essential part of their molecules too. 



There are other possible extensions. Basing our- 

 selves upon a proteolytic theory of serum immunity, 

 one may regard anaphylaxis as the result of an 

 abnormal reversal of the usual hydrolysis, leading 

 instead to accentuated synthesis of the introduced 

 toxin, the eventual balance of the reactions being 

 sensitive to extremely small additions of the original 

 substance from without. 



Such questions lead us far from the treatment of 

 war wounds, but they arise spontaneously from the 

 legitimate subject-matter of this paper, which points 

 directly towards them, and it is too much to expect 

 a mere human being to turn his back deliberately 

 when such glorious, if perhaps distant, prospects 

 unfold themselves to his view, with their ambrosial 

 suggestion of great good to come. 



(C948) 16 



