has been uniformly true even in cases of • extended infection, 

 associated during the last dajT-s with the most destructive emacia- 

 tion and with what appeared to be complete collapse of the ani- 

 mal's vital defensive mechanism. 



It has also been developed in this paper that the Wright 

 opsonic index is useful for determining the lower limits of 

 phagocytic capacity but may ^ive no adequate measure of the 

 actual extent of an animal's opsonic defense. It appears cer- 

 tain that the percent of infected animals dying because of a 

 collapse in the pha^^ocytic defense is very much smaller than is 

 commonly supposed. Indeed, it is quite often as inaccurate and 

 meaningless to say that an infected animal is overcome on ac- 

 count of a rupture in its phagocytic defense as it would be to 

 contend that a man was run down by a train because of a break 

 in his running technique, although at the time of the disaster 

 he was exhibiting a speed beyond anything he had ever developed 

 before in his life time. 



(62) 



