314 SYMBIOGENESIS 



But how has it disappeared, and what are the bio-dynamic 

 concomitants of such disappearance? That is the question. 

 As we cannot presume the preparatory substance to have 

 vanished into thin air, it must have been neutralised and, we 

 must presume, at considerable cost of vitality, by the body. It 

 is not until this process of neutralisation (" alloy "-formation) 

 is completed that the body's preoccupation has gone, that it 

 can proceed to a more drastic operation, which nevertheless 

 purports purification, viz., a symbiotic "elan," or the 

 t: anaphylactic " crisis. Though this is intoxication, yet there 

 is method in it ! In order to bring on the anaphylactic con- 

 dition, " Usually the exciting dose should be stronger than the 

 preparatory dose," which somewhat speaks for itself, for it 

 seems hardly worth while for the body to run the great risk of 

 the anaphylactic crisis except under great urgency. 



Prof. Kichet tells us that while seeking a biological reason 

 for, and the final cause of, anaphylaxis, he was led to suppose 

 " that animals acquire this extraordinary sensibility in order to 

 be able, during the anaphylactic period, to resist any further 

 effect of the poison. With certain substances, as, for example, 

 mytilo-congestine, anaphylaxis diminishes markedly towards 

 the fortieth day, and the state of immunity establishes itself." 

 He adds, however, that this seems less probable to him to-day. 

 Some organisms are more accommodating no doubt for poisons, 

 as for pathogenesis generally, than others. Some develop 

 resistance better and quicker than others. But this is not yet 

 a biological explanation of the deeply-founded antagonism with 

 which we are here concerned. Nor have we here a genuine 

 immunity, but only a specific and temporary one patho- 

 genetically come to and in reality rendering the condition of 

 the organism precarious, mainly because of the costliness of the 

 new "adaptation" in other directions. A sensitised individual, 

 as we have seen, is never the same again, however much it may 

 have succeeded in neutralising a certain poison. 



Doerr and Raubitschek have observed the same phenomenon with 

 eel serum. The simultaneousness of anaphylaxis and immunity in the 



