THE CHEMICAL CO-ORDINATION OF 

 THE ACTIVITIES OF THE BODY 1 



By ERNEST II. STARLING, M.D., F.R.S. 



We are accustomed to regard each act in the life of an animal 

 as a link in a never-ending chain of adaptations to the environ- 

 ment, each act being a complex of a number of mutually- 

 adapted activities affecting very various parts of the body. 

 This common action of many organs involves the existence of 

 some nexus, some connecting or controlling mechanism. In 

 many cases, and in every instance where the activity of one 

 organ has to be swiftly adjusted to that of other parts of the 

 body, the correlating mechanism is represented by the nervous 

 system. 



The consensus partium is, however, a characteristic, not 

 merely of the higher animals, but of all organised existence, 

 and is present throughout the whole of the plant and animal 

 kingdoms, in many cases in the complete absence of a nervous 

 system. In such cases the correlation between different parts 

 of the organism must be effected by chemical means. The 

 most marked reactions among the lowest organisms, such as 

 bacteria, are those determined by chemical substances and 

 spoken of generally as chemiotactic. Chemiotactic sensibility 

 determines the aggregation of bacteria or other unicellular 

 organisms around food, the collection of phagocytes in all 

 classes of the animal kingdom round foreign bodies, and the 

 union of the sexual cells both in plants and animals. In plants 

 and the lower animals the transmission of an influence by- 

 chemical means from one part of the organism to another must 

 be a relatively slow process. With the appearance of a vascular 

 system and of a common circulating fluid bathing all the cells 

 of the body, no chemical substance can be formed and discharged 

 by any cell without being carried in a very short space of time 



1 The substance of this article formed the subject of an address given at the 

 Naturforscherversammlung in Stuttgart, in September 1906. 



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