212 VAUGHAN— THE PROTEIN POISON. [April 19, 



Itis grows most frequently in the lungs, though it has fed upon man 

 for so long a time that it is now able to sustain itself in almost any 

 - part of his body. 



From what has been said it must follow that fever on the whole 

 is a beneficent process. It is one of the phenomena of the parenteral 

 digestion of proteins. The foreign protein has gotten into the body, 

 is growing and multiplying, and in doing so is utilizing the proteins 

 of man's body. It must be destroyed, and the body cells pour out a 

 ferment which digests the foreign protein. This is nature's way of 

 disposing of the foreign material, and it is apparently about the only 

 way that nature has of doing it. I repeat therefore that fever on the 

 whole is a beneficent process. It is an attempt on the part of nature 

 to get rid of the invading protein. Like many other of nature's proc- 

 esses it may be overdone, and death may result from fever, per se. 



That fever does result from a fermentative cleavage is shown 

 not only by the facts which I have already enumerated, but those 

 which we have learned in combating fever. Nearly all, if not all, of 

 the anti-febrile reagents which have been employed in medicine are 

 anti-ferments, and they lower the temperature by retarding the 

 process of protein cleavage. Both natural and acquired immunity, 

 apart from toxic immunity, may be explained by the facts as stated 

 above. In natural immunity the foreign protein is either unable to 

 grow and multiply, and this means that its ferments are unable to 

 split up the proteins of the body, or the ferments of the body split 

 up the invading protein before it has time to grow and multiply. 

 This explains natural immunity, whether it be racial or individual. 



Acquired immunity is explained by the fact that the first attack 

 of the disease, or inoculation with a modified virus, develops in the 

 body cells a ferment which is stored up, and which on a second 

 injection of the same protein, acts rapidly, and effectively, and splits 

 up the invading virus. In vaccination for smallpox we use a virus 

 modified by its passage through the cow. This modified smallpox 

 virus develops in the body cells a ferment which is capable of split- 

 ting up the smallpox virus, and the next time this individual comes 

 in contact with a smallpox patient, or receives the smallpox virus, it 

 is split up and destroyed before it has time to grow and multiply. 



