160 THE PROTEOMORPHIC THEORY AND THE NEW MEDICINE 



observations, far greater therapeutic value than the milder pro- 

 teins mentioned. 



It should be explained that, whereas the introduction of vege- 

 table proteins therapeutically into the parenteral system has been 

 practiced extensively for a period of only about three and a half 

 years, many cases have been under observation in which treat- 

 ment with an animal protein (sheep serum) dates from a period 

 much more remote from five to ten years. The aggregate ex- 

 perience with the therapeutic use of foreign proteins introduced 

 parenterally includes upward of four thousand cases directly 

 observed or more or less definitely reported; and as the treat- 

 ment of individual cases has usually been extended over terms 

 of weeks or months, a single patient sometimes receiving up- 

 ward of 300 doses, it will be seen that practical experience is 

 sufficiently extensive to justify deductions meriting confidence. 



The general conclusion which I wish to state in unequivocal 

 and emphatic terms is that patients subjected for prolonged 

 periods to the hypodermic administration of foreign proteins, 

 including sheep serum and a variety of vegetable proteins, show 

 no evidence, either clinical or hematological, of toxicity in the 

 ordinary sense of the word, but, on the contrary, are robust 

 of physique and normal of blood. Meantime the pathological 

 symptoms for which the proteins were administered may have 

 disappeared altogether or have been markedly modified for the 

 better. 



This, after all, is what might have been predicated from a 

 knowledge of the fact that a certain amount of unbroken pro- 

 protein from the food finds its way regularly into the parenteral 

 system from the digestive tract. In other words, every indi- 

 vidual, in health and in disease, is more or less subject to con- 

 tinuous cytogenic stimulus from the presence of the food proteins 

 in his parenteral system. To be sure, it has been suggested (by 

 Metchnikoff originally) that this fact has to do with the ulti- 

 mate development of symptoms of senescence with the passing 

 of the years; and it is my personal belief that the presence 

 of foreign proteins in excess, taken as food products with the 

 ordinary diet, is responsible for a large measure of the malad- 

 justments that are incident to and coincident with the devel- 

 opment of what we term old age. Be that as it may, however, 

 the case records cited in this book (together with those epit- 

 omized in tables of the Monograph) would appear to give final 

 answer to the question whether a prolonged use of proteanti- 

 gens in therapeutic dosage constitutes a measure necessarily det- 

 rimental to the patient. The records seem to show that, quite 

 on the contrary, such administration may be in the highest de- 



