178 THE PROTEOMORPHIC THEORY AND THE NEW MEDICINE 



is to the effect that, whereas I advocate a low protein diet for 

 people at middle age and later, in health and in toxaemic mala- 

 dies, and in particular a low animal protein diet, with emphasis 

 on the exclusion of bearers of purin-bases for rheumatoid cases, 

 I nevertheless believe it advantageous occasionally to permit the 

 patient to depart from the rule and indulge in a meal including 

 a moderate portion of meat for example, about three cubic 

 inches of beefsteak. 



It is a familiar experience that such a meal, indulged by 

 exception and not too frequently, has a stimulative or tonic 

 effect. Haig explains this, as will be recalled by every one 

 familiar with his oft-berated but never discredited work on Uric 

 Acid, on the assumption that the beef tends to acidify the liver 

 and cause that organ to sieve the uric acid out of the blood 

 temporarily an explanation that appears to me altogether fan- 

 ciful and fallacious. Doubtless my own explanation will seem 

 equally fanciful to any one who has not grasped, or does not 

 accept, the fundamental thesis of the Proteomorphic theory. 

 Be that as it may, my explanation is that a certain amount of 

 the protein of the steak is pretty sure to find its way into the 

 parenteral system not fully decompounded (experiments cited 

 in earlier chapters fully warrant this assumption), and will thus 

 act as a proteantigen stimulating corpuscular response precisely 

 as if it had been introduced hypodermically. In effect, eating 

 the steak was equivalent to giving treatment with a protein of a 

 type which is not familiar (since the meat is eaten only at rather 

 long intervals), and against which the system is not at the moment 

 fully immunized. 



The corpuscular response includes, according to hypothesis, 

 increased enzymic activities of the corpuscles ; enhancing, there- 

 fore, the purin-body-reducing functions of the erythrocytes, 

 and thus tending to clear the blood of uric acid in accordance 

 with Haig's statement of the fact, but not at all in accordance 

 with his explanation of the modus operandi. The increased 

 activity of the red corpuscles and their consequent excessive 

 destruction in the liver might indeed be said to "acidify" that 

 organ, through increased influx of uric acid, and in particular 

 urea, from the bodies of the disrupted erythrocytes; but the 

 "sieving" process, according to the present thesis, would consist 

 in the increased capacity of the erythrocytes to transform uric 

 acid into urea (see Chapter I above). 



Meantime, of course, the beef protein ingested, if entering 

 the parenteral system more or less fully digested, but short of 

 the amino-acid stage, would bring an increment of purin bodies 

 that would add to the uric acid supply. Where the balance 

 would be struck, in any individual case, would depend upon the 



