POST-STIMULANT AND POST-MORTEM ACTIVITY 57 



possessing affectability towards this stimulus, respond 

 or react by detach'ng certain " side-chains " which 

 as antitoxin neutralise the toxin introduced. But 

 if this were all, there would be no acquired immunity 

 from future infection. Ehrlich at this point assumes 

 an overproduction of free side-chains or receptors as 

 antitoxin ; but this is a post-stimulant production, 

 it is a production in excess of immediate needs, it is 

 a response that has outlived the stimulus, it is an 

 expression of katabolic inertia. Obviously the in- 

 susceptible animal has maximal protoplasmic inertia 

 towards the toxin. Weigert believes that this over- 

 production is characteristic of all tissue-repair, if 

 so, it is dependent on katabolic inertia. Macleod,* 

 writing on the production of endogenous purins, 

 remarks, " Purin increase due to muscular activity 

 existed not only during the actual working time, but 

 for some time after it " -post-stimulant activity. 



Functional inertia expresses itself in what must be 

 thought, by the non-biologically minded, a most 

 paradoxical fashion post-mortem vitality. The 

 death of an animal as a whole by no means involves 

 there and then the death of all its various con- 

 stituent tissues. In the case of unicellular organisms 

 portions will live separated from the main body ; 

 the non-nucleated portion of the bisected Lacry- 

 maria olor for a certain time lives and moves 

 although, possessing no nucleus, it cannot ultimately 

 survive ; the non-nucleated pseudopodia detached 



* Hill and Co-writers, " Recent Advances in Physiology and 

 Bio-chemistry/' p. 431. (Arnold, 1906.) 



