NATURAL RESISTANCE AND FATIGUE 155 



These experiments, the details of which were pub- 

 lished almost thirty years ago (Turck, 1903), demon- 

 strate that fatigue of the gastric muscles gives rise to 

 the formation of a toxic entity capable of causing 

 changes similar to those associated with fatigue in the 

 muscles of other animals. Since such a fatigue syn- 

 drome may be produced by the parenteral introduc- 

 tion of the toxin into other animals, it follows that if 

 this same toxic substance, or another substance of simi- 

 lar nature, is produced elsewhere in the body in suffi- 

 cient quantity, then a similar reaction of the stomach 

 is to be expected. 



The reader will recall, perhaps, that in our dis- 

 cussion of shock produced by anesthesia it was shown 

 that under prolonged anesthesia the stomach was 

 found to become distended, flabby, and insensitive to 

 stimuli. This was shown to be due to the action of 

 cytost liberated by the action of the anesthetic upon 

 various cells of the body. At the time the experi- 

 ments upon the stomach, cited above, were made, the 

 author's cytost theory had not been developed to the 

 extent presented in our previous discussion. In view 

 of the latter, however, it now appears that the "fatigue 

 toxin" extracted from the stomach muscles is to be 

 regarded as synonymous with the cytost liberated 

 from tissues by the various means detailed in the pre- 

 ceding pages. If it be remembered that, as shown pre- 

 viously, the visceral organs of endodermal origin are 

 peculiarly sensitive to the action of cytost, one can 

 readily account for the behavior of the stomach under 

 the conditions of these early experiments. 



If the fatigue toxin formed in the musculature of 

 the stomach by the experimental means cited above 



