212 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [mAUCH 29, 



the connective tissues of the blood and of other organs, owing to 

 a past attack of scarhitina, become j)ossessed of new functions oi 

 of some new power." This immunity may not be a new func- 

 tion, but it certainly is a new power, and I claim that it is no 

 more impossible to imagine a new power conferred on cells by 

 an attack of scarlatina, namely tolerance, tlian it is to imagine 

 the acquired tolerance to tobacco. The rationale of each may 

 be impossible to the imagination, but the fact of one is proved. 



Admitting then with Dr. Klein that these disease germs, in 

 their life and multiplication, produce organic substances, but 

 here parting company with him, does it seem improbable that 

 this substance in the different cases may exercise a poisonous 

 action on the animal cells, and that there may be a tolerance 

 established if the attack is not fatal ? 



The theory embraces none of those stumbling blocks of reteiv 

 tion in the system of foreign organic matter without elimination 

 .and the strange behavior of cultures outside the animal body. 

 We have heard much of "reversion to type," and the question 

 may very fairly be put, if these blood-discs, tissue cells, or 

 whatever of the bodily organism supposed to acquire tolerance, 

 have for many years conformed to a certain type, lacking tiiis 

 tolerance, why sliould we not expect that as soon as the disease 

 is removed the cells will regain their old condition? The answer 

 is that they slowly do, as witness the vaccination methods and 

 statistics, and we cannot deny a fact because opposed to what we 

 would consider probability. The fact which I have reference to, 

 is that under the nearest possible similar circumstances, we ob- 

 serve the acquired characteristic very persistent; thus take the 

 virus of fowl cholera attenuated as Pasteur prepares it, and yet 

 successive cultures in the ordinary way, each culture representing 

 many generations, show no perceptible difference in the one ac- 

 quired characteristic, the degree of mitigation. Chamberland 

 and Koux claim also the same result in cultivations of the ba- 

 cillus of splenic fever. 



And again, the tolerance acquired is not of necessity great. 

 In the contest between the disease germs and the normal cells, 

 we are in no wise qualified to say how much or how little will 

 determine the battle for or against health. 



In concluding, I will refer to Sternberg's paper in the Ameri- 

 can Journal of the Medical Sciences for April, 1881, and say 

 that he there confines himself to a discussion of Pasteur's theory 

 of exhaustion, as this paper deals more exclusively with the 

 antidote theory. So far a? regards Sternberg's own theory, I 

 have abstracted the paper only so far as is necessary to do justice 

 to his views; in the illustrations, and where possible in the argu- 

 ments, I have endeavored to follow a somewhat different line 



