478 DAVID H. DOLLEY 



material elaborated and consumed to consummate it is a quan- 

 titative reaction. Thus, for example, in senility, the senile 

 resting cell is an organically damaged cell, shrunken, deficient 

 in substance, perhaps without a karyosome, though withal 

 showing the characteristics of a resting cell and the absence of 

 activity changes. When this damaged cell is excited to activity — 

 and it will react until the nucleus vanishes — it plainly runs a 

 parallel sequence with the most virile young cell in its varied 

 activity changes, and though the substance is less and the nucleus- 

 plasma coefficient changed somewhat, the appearance indicates 

 plainly that the senile changes are quantitatively based on the 

 acquired nucleus-plasma coefficient. So obvious does this appear 

 that it has not been considered necessary to test it by measure- 

 ments, and, indeed, why should a principle which holds all through 

 life change for a natural end result of that life, especially when 

 the modifications that then take place may be correlated with 

 that principle, as will appear? The decline of quality then with 

 advancing age is conceived to affect rebuilding and recupera- 

 tion, and so the cell recovers to a lower level of efficiency after 

 each cycle of activity. Each succeeding display of activity is 

 quantitatively based on the last level. Verworn comes to the 

 same conception from the physiological side as the following quo- 

 tation will show ('09) . 



Die spezifische Energie irgendeiner gegebenen Form der lebendigen 

 Substanz ist also etwas Relatives, das abhangig ist von dem gerade 

 gegebenen Zustande des betreffenden Systems und nur in bezug auf 

 diesen momentan gegebenen Zustand besteht die Gesetzmassigkeit, dass 

 alle Reize primar die spezifischen Lebensprozesse quantitativ verandem, 

 in dem sie dieselben erregen oder lahmen. 



Nor does disease offer any exception in its primary analysis. 

 To an extent that has not been sufficiently appreciated, disease 

 is a natural process. Within that process limit, morbid excitant 

 stimuli produce the same changes as normal excitant stimuli 

 and morbid depressant stimuli parallel normal depressant stimuli. 

 Cells are driven to exhaustion in the pure excitation of shock 

 or tetanus; morbid depressant stimuli go no further in their 

 final inhibition of function than a normal condition of life such 



