234 THE ACTION OF THE LIVING CELL 



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% cc. — always brought about death within fifteen 

 minutes, and in many instances within several seconds 

 following the injection. At autopsy, immediately fol- 

 lowing death, all the animals killed in this way ex- 

 hibited the typical pathology of "death by shock" ; the 

 lungs and abdominal viscera were always found to 

 be markedly congested. 



This extreme rapidity of the onset of symptoms, 

 and death, shows that the ash itself must be toxic, and 

 that the typical cytost efifect obtained is due to the ash 

 and not to the liberation of cytost from the animal's 

 own tissues by the action of the ash thereon. Further 

 evidence for this argument is found in the marked dif- 

 ference in the response of the animals to the ash solu- 

 tion when injected subcutaneously. In the latter case 

 the sloughing of the skin at the site of injection shows 

 that the ash may act locally, causing the death of tis- 

 sues. The rate of absorption, however, is consider- 

 ably less than in the case of the intraperitoneal injec- 

 tions; hence the viscera are not suddenly exposed to 

 a sufficiently great concentration of cytost to cause 

 congestion, stagnation, and death. 



Similar experiments were carried out upon rats 

 and cats with the ash of homologous tissues, and quali- 

 tatively the experimental findings were essentially the 

 same. 



We have stated earlier that saline extracts of auto- 

 lyzed tissue appear to have a certain species specifi- 

 city when the power to elicit shock is determined. 

 Naturally, this raised the question as to whether or 

 not the tissue ash would show a similar specificity in 

 this regard. To this end experiments, of which the 

 following are representative, were conducted: 



