October i6, 1919] 



NATURE 



13^ 



he then encountered. The book is based on a 

 series of lectures on the resources and on the 

 industrial and political problems of Australia. The 

 author writes on political questions with expert 

 knowledge. The chapter on the resources of Aus- 

 tralia is less trustworthy ; thus it says that there is 

 little evidence of a diminishing flow from the 

 artesian wells, in spite of the conclusive evidence 

 to the contrary on the maps of the Queensland 

 Water Supply Department. The exaggerated ex- 

 pectations based on the artesian water near Lake 

 Eyre are also based on incomplete information. 



The chapter entitled " Industrial and Social 

 Problems" is probably the most important; 

 it, however, deals only with the attempt to 

 settle some of them by legislation. The 

 author represents the New Zealand attempt 

 to regulate wages by a special law court 

 as a complete failure. He commends the wages 

 boards of Victoria, but considers that system in- 

 applicable where labour is aggressive. The 

 attempt of New South Wales to enforce its labour 

 laws by imprisonment or other penalties he 

 regards as hopelessly impracticable. He shows, 

 on the other hand, that the Australian system of 

 land settlement has been remarkably successful, 

 and the State expenditure on railways and public 

 works a profitable investment. He predicts that 

 the Constitution will be greatly modified in 1921, 

 but does not expect that Australia will accept 

 unification. 



The book is a very valuable, up-to-date sum- 

 mary of the trend of industrial legislation in Aus- 

 tralia, though the war has so disturbed its develop- 

 ment that the conditions now are abnormal. A 

 weighty preface by Sir Charles Lucas refers to the 

 difficulties in the British and Australian compre- 

 hension of each other's points of view, and wel- 

 comes the book as helpful to that fuller knowledge 

 and closer sympathy which are indispensable for 

 permanent Imperial union. 



Resources and Industries of the United States. 

 By Prof. E. F. Fisher. Pp. ix-f 246. (Boston 

 and London: Ginn and Co., 1919.) Price 

 3s. gd. net. 

 Prof. Fisher's book is illuminating In that it 

 presents the United States to the reader in such 

 guise as to emphasise the greatness of the 

 progress and the healthiness of the growth of the 

 country. It is addressed to American secondary- 

 school pupils, but merits a much wider public ; it 

 is knit together by a doctrine which is new to 

 geography books — the doctrine that human 

 energies should be conserved. The pupils are 

 stimulated to visualise not only the resources and 

 industries, but also the means whereby these may 

 be conserved and made of most use to the com- 

 munity. For example, the United States, which 

 produces two-thirds of the world's petroleum, uses 

 more than it produces because it wastes half the oil 

 that comes from the earth by allowing it to run 

 to waste or to evaporate in open storage tanks. 

 Petroleum is needlessly used to drive engines over 

 32,000 miles of railroad where electricity could be 

 utilised. The pictures and maps are effective. 

 NO. 2607, VOL. 104] 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for 

 opinions expressed by his correspondents. Neither 

 can he undertake to return, or to correspond with 

 the writers of, rejected manuscripts intended for 

 this or any other part of Nature. No notice is 

 taken of anonymous communications.} 



Colloid and Saline in Shock and Cholera. 



The two letters by Sir Leonard Rogers and Prof. 

 Bayliss in Nature of September 25 are of interest and 

 importance, not only to physiologists and physicians, 

 but also to physical chemists. The two series of 

 observations are not contradictory of each other, but 

 complementary. 



There exists in blood plasma and in all living cells 

 a delicate labile balance between the salines or crystal- 

 loids and the colloids. These two types of dissolved 

 substances are not present in free condition, but in 

 colloidal adsorption, the one with the other, forming 

 a crystallo-colloidal complex. 



This delicate balance is upset in opposite directions 

 in wound-shock and in cholera respectively, saline 

 being in excess relatively to the colloid in the former, 

 and colloid of toxic origin in excess in the latter. 



Hypertonic saline is efficacious in cholera because 

 it replaces a defect, and combines with colloids of 

 cells and with toxins which otherwise would combine 

 with each other. In addition, it confers osmotic pres- 

 sure on the poisonous toxins and hastens them out 

 through the excretory cells. It is, indeed, because of 

 this latte'i action that its concentration has become 

 subnormal during the attack of cholera. 



.\ colloid like gum-acacia is of no service in cholera, 

 but rather the reverse, because it is an additional 

 claimant for the denuded salines. 



On the other hand, after haemorrhage, as in wound- 

 shock, both colloid and crystalloid are at first diluted, 

 but saline is more fully restored from tissues than 

 the protein colloids. In such circumstances there is 

 no colloid available to hold any hypertonic or isotonic 

 saline which may be injected, and this saline is 

 promptly ejected bv the excretory mechanisms ; so 

 saline alone is not efficacious. But a colloid of such 

 a type as protein, gelatine, or gum-acacia possesses 

 too great a molecule (or solution aggregate) to be 

 excreted until it is broken down by metabolism, and, 

 in addition to not being able to go out, it anchors 

 salines by passing into labile adsorption with 

 them, and so holds fluid in the vessels, raises pressure, 

 assists the heart by giving fluid to fill it, and saves 

 the cells from denudation of their crystalloids, which 

 beyond a certain point always leads to change in col- 

 loidal aggregation and death. 



It may be pointed out that such crystallo-colloidal 

 adsorption is Ii1<ewise the explanation of the important 

 discovery of Ch. Richet, Brodin, and Saint-Girons at 

 Paris that anaphylactic shock can be completely pre- 

 vented bv hypertonic saline. Here also lies the ex- 

 planation for the prevention of haemolysis by an active 

 haemolysin in presence of hypertonic saline as shown 

 some years ago by McCay and Sutherland. • 



The saline locks up by adsorption the toxin or the 

 immune body, and this can then no longer attack 

 nerve-cells or blood corpuscles. 



Under physiological conditions it is this adsorption 

 of saline by colloid which determines the concentration 

 of saline in circulation and cells. This regulation is 

 one of the most ancient in evolution, far more so than 

 regulation of bodv-temperature, for it holds sway from 

 the teleostean fish to man. Whatever the concentra- 

 tion of the fluid of the external medium in salines 

 from pond-water to sea-water, the salinity of the 

 intimate medium bathing the living cells is always 



