102 THE PROTEOMORPHIC THEORY AND THE NEW MEDICINE 



Nevertheless there are dangers in excessive temperature, if 

 for no other reason because tissues that it is essential to con- 

 serve are also stimulated thereby to unwonted activity. So it is 

 highly desirable from time to time to accelerate the removal 

 from the body of the excessive heat due to the chemical activ- 

 ities. And, of course, the best practical means of accomplishing 

 this is the cold bath. 



The idea of giving a fever patient liberal potations of water, 

 feeding him freely with nourishing foods, and from time to 

 time plunging him into cold baths or swathing him in cold packs 

 would have come very near to giving an apoplectic shock to the 

 best clinicians of a century ago. But nowadays such procedures 

 have the fullest experimental or clinical warrant, and find expla- 

 nation in the data of physiological chemistry. 



It is probable, however, that comparatively few clinicians 

 among these who use the cold bath habitually in fever cases, 

 and recognize its value in the direct reduction of temperature, 

 take cognizance also of its significance in stimulating the cyto- 

 genic organs to the production of new hosts of germ destroyers. 

 Yet it is probable that the latter is by no. means the least of the 

 services performed by the cold bath. 



It is a little difficult to accustom one's self to the idea that 

 there is no necessary connection between the degree of fever 

 and the virulence of intoxication. But the truth of this propo- 

 sition is suggested by the familiar observation that infants often 

 show a high temperature when their maladies are comparatively 

 mild. And it receives experimental demonstration through the 

 observations of Vaughan and others to the effect that small doses 

 of a protein poison may cause a rise of temperature in animals 

 where far larger doses of the same toxin produce no fever, but 

 may even cause a fall in temperature. 



Vaughan very justly refers to this as a puzzling and not clearly 

 explicable fact. A conceivable explanation might be that small 

 doses stimulate the defensive leucocytic mechanism, while large 

 doses act with such suddenness and violence as to paralyze them ; 

 just as they sometimes seem to be helpless when they have in- 

 gested a large number of toxic bacteria. It should be recalled 

 that the introduction of these large doses of foreign proteins 

 directly into the vascular system is a phenomenon that would be 

 of exceeding rare occurrence outside the laboratory. The fang 

 of a serpent is about the only mechanism in the natural world 

 that would be capable of introducing a foreign protein in quan- 

 tity into the animal system. So the defensive mechanism has 

 not often been called on to reckon with this contingency, and 

 it cannot deal effectively with excessive doses of toxic proteids. 



But, however explained, these laboratory experiments are of 



