62 THE PROTEOMORPHIC THEORY AND THE NEW MEDICINE 



million atoms. So even if the leucocyte were far smaller than 

 it is (for, of course, it is by no means at the limit of microscopic 

 visibility), its nucleus might be a very intricate structure indeed, 

 chemically considered a chemical laboratory quite elaborate 

 enough to generate all the different types of antibody that the 

 system could conceivably require. 



Each of these nascent antibodies, as lodged in the leucocyte, 

 may be supposed to represent a specific protein, capable of taking 

 to itself the right combination of atoms to increase in size and, 

 under proper conditions, to multiply indefinitely, to meet the 

 needs imposed by the intrusion of a particular type of toxic pro- 

 tein. In the ordinary course of events, doubtless, only a compara- 

 tively small number of the different types of antibodies in the 

 equipment of the leucocyte laboratory would be called upon to 

 come into action at a given time. It might even happen that 

 for long periods of time, even for generations, a particular type 

 of nascent antibody that has been developed in the cell might 

 not be called upon to meet and antagonize its specific antigen. 



But what we know of the germ-cell, and of the possible qui- 

 escence of hereditary factors for successive generations, teaches 

 us that it may readily be possible for the cell to carry forward 

 during an indefinite period such unused increments of nascent 

 antidotes ; and yet to call them into action when the proper stim- 

 ulus comes, even though such stimulus has not hitherto been 

 applied for many human generations. 



In this view, then, we may think of the cells that generate the 

 leucocyte as a storehouse in which minute quantities of large 

 numbers of different types of proteins are arranged, in what 

 may be called the nascent state, all of them with potentialities of 

 development, and a certain number of them constantly called 

 upon to meet the stimulus of external conditions in the form of 

 different types of protoplasms or proteids that, but for their aid, 

 would be poisonous to the organism in the blood stream of which 

 their daughter cells, the leucocyte, are liberated. 



It is, of course, the mother cells, in bone marrow and spleen 

 and lymph node, that must be thought of as the permanent source 

 of supply of these nascent antibodies. For, of course, the devel- 

 oped leucocyte, once it has gone out from the parental abode, is 

 in a sense an independent organism, lying beyond the bounds of 

 the cellular system of the complex organism in the blood stream 

 of which it operates. The force of this view is very well illus- 

 trated in the familiar fact that when toxic bacteria are ingested 

 by a phagocytic leucocyte, these toxic bacteria are no longer able 

 to exert a malignant influence on the organism. For a time they 

 retain their normal form and appearance ; but the leucocyte, by 



