152 THE PROTEOMORPHIC THEORY AND THE NEW MEDICINE 



proteal treatment, I have recorded a poly nuclear count of only 

 39 per cent. 



It seems not altogether unlikely that the relatively low poly- 

 nuclear count of childhood accounts for the susceptibility of 

 the child to the familiar exanthemata; and that, contrariwise, 

 the abundance of polynuclears in the adult organism accounts for 

 the relative immunity of adults to these diseases. It would appear 

 to be a case where the righting equipment of the body, as directed 

 against bacteria in general, has been brought to a stage of pre- 

 paredness in the average adult that makes it possible to attack 

 and overwhelm the germs of, for example, measles and whoop- 

 ing cough, whereas the same germs would have been able to 

 make effective entry into the system of the average child. 



A similar line of reasoning may perhaps be applied tc Account 

 for the observed fact that the red corpuscles are less abundant 

 in the blood of the child and adolescence than in the blood of 

 the average adult. Incidentally, this fact in itself would appear 

 to prove that the red corpuscles have some function other than 

 the carrying of oxygen, inasmuch as the cellular activities of 

 childhood and adolescence must certainly be somewhat more than 

 on a par with those of the adult. Accepting the Proteomorphic 

 interpretation of the function of the red corpuscles as the agents 

 concerned in dealing with the end products of protein metabol- 

 ism, the increase of these corpuscles in adult life might be 

 interpreted as showing an increased protein infection of a char- 

 acter to charge the blood with larger quantities of end products 

 (of the polypeptid order) with advancing years, associated per- 

 haps with waning power of the digestive apparatus. 



The fact that physiologists commonly mention 4,500,000 red 

 corpuscles as the average normal increment for women and 

 5,000,000 as the increment for men a fact hitherto, so far as I 

 know, entirely unexplained may conceivably be accounted for 

 on the supposition that men, on the average, eat larger quanti- 

 ties of protein food than women. The proverbially daintier appe- 

 tites of the female sex accord with this hypothesis ; which is here 

 put forward, however, only as a suggestion. The greater activ- 

 ity of the male would be an obvious explanation from a more 

 conventional angle ; but comparative histology robs this explana- 

 tion of force by reminding us that relatively inactive animals like 

 the sheep have a high erythrocyte count, whereas excessively 

 active birds have a low count. 



Meantime my personal studies leave me very much in doubt 

 as to whether there is, in point of fact, an established sex factor 

 in determining the red cell count an item of obvious prelim- 

 inary importance, deserving further investigation. 



Whatever the fact as to sex differences, however, it appears 



