i9ii] William J. Gies 6y 



changes in cells? Why, in turn, do certain discoordinations and 

 new relationships among cell constituents induce the effects which 

 are frequently seen in the many well known nervous disorders and 

 tempermental derangements ? 



Dozens of questions of similar Import come to mind in any 

 thotightful consideration of the relationships of cell constituents to 

 each other and to cell vitality and functions, yet who is able to 

 answer any one of the foregoing questions in terms of our present 

 meagre knowledge in this field. It was long-standing appreciation 

 of the fundamental biological importance and the practical medical 

 significance of research in this broad and open field, that led me, in 

 the fall of 1909, after a number of studies of protein salts, to pro- 

 pose the series of investigations " on the composition of protoplasm 

 and the nature of the structural and dynamic relationships of cell 

 constituents and prodiicts/' which was then inaugurated and which 

 has since been in progress in our laboratory under the auspices of 

 the George Crocker Special Research Fund. This proposed series 

 of chemical investigations has the great merit of being broadly 

 fundamental in biological character, essential in physiological nature, 

 significant in pathological bearing, and promising in its ultimate 

 crop of facts and principles relating to the etiology of Cancer. 



Ehrlich has shown that the defensive agents "at the seat of 

 war" in cellular pathology are special sitbstances and molecular 

 groitps of intracellular derivation. Diagrams illustrative of the 

 details of Ehrlich's great conception, and showing the " toxophore 

 groups," " haptophore groups," " zymophore groups," " cytophile 

 groups," "receptors," " amboceptors," " complement," "toxins," 

 *' antitoxins," " agglutinin," etc., etc., appear in every up-to-date book 

 on pathology. The investigator of immunity problems thinks in 

 terms of these diagrams and the Student of immunity learns the 

 fundamental views in terms of such figures. Yet all of the Ehrlich 

 **bodies" are figurative and very useful makeshifts for important 

 realities of intracellular constitutions, cellular affinities, extracellular 

 dynamics, and the reactions of cell constituents with extracellular 

 substances. How much more clearly all of it could be put, and 

 how much more effectively the facts could be used, if the Ehrlich 

 theories were based on exact knowledge of intracellular chemical 



