TEACHING OF PHYSIOIjOGY AXD PCBUC HEALTH, 41 



'.' -;.:.i::.:: :: .- :-r:>.:; -;;; > 

 to be treated to a terrific dose of nicotine would be to grad- 

 ually more and more accustom himself to the injurious 

 : : 



Just what may be accomplished by gradually inuring the 

 body to poisons is remarkable. By slowly increasing doses, 

 sir -;;.:.::-. e r_:iy zilly be ^ n; ::; .in: ;:::;:.$ >; I.i: s e :;::.: 

 they would have produced instant death if administered for 

 the first time. Arsenic eaters are able to take amounts of 

 that drug which would be out of the question by one who 

 had never taken it before. Passably this view explains the 

 philosophy of vaccination and anti-toxine methods. As 

 gwfty one knows vaccination for smallpox consists in intro- 

 duong a weakened form of that virus into the body which 

 there produces a mild attack of smallpox. In this attack 

 the poison is developed so slowly and gradually that the 

 body can adjust itself to these increasing amounts and a 

 succeeding attack of the violent form, would thus not be 

 able to strike down the energies of the body at the very 

 onset before possibly the body had had time to overcome the 

 dangerous intruder. In the anti-toxine method now used in 

 diphtheria the seium of a horse which has had diphtheria,, 

 and in which blood, therefore, is found some of this diphthe- 

 retic poison, is injected in small doses into the body of the 

 patient suspected of developing diphtheria. The poison so 

 injected in small, or slightly increasing doses gradually 

 allows the body to adjust itself to it so that later on wtien the 

 disease has produced greater quantities of this same poison 

 the tissues have been acclimated to it to such an extent that 

 the poison does not prove fatal. As the bacteria them- 

 selves can not live when the amount of the poison which 

 they have formed becomes too great it may be too, that the 

 introduction of some of this poison into a patient's blood 

 will serve to check the growth of the microbes. 



PROBLEMS, 



Hie specific germs of measles, yellow fever, and even 



:: . : ye: : .ef.::::e~.y k:;. -,-.-_-.. ": ..: :: ::: :;:c 



