618 THE INTERNAL SECRETIONS AND IMMUNITY. 



abdomen. A small dose taken some time before produced the 

 same effect; morphine had likewise given rise to unusual 

 symptoms. Adrenal insufficiency is also well exemplified in 

 a case witnessed by A. E. Roberts. 11 The patient, a woman of 

 36 years, after .taking about 300 grains, became totally uncon- 

 scious and inert. The surface was cold and livid; the axillary 

 temperature, 95 F. (35 C.); the respiration almost imper- 

 ceptible, shallow, and slow; and the pulse thin and small. The 

 pupils were considerably dilated, and did not respond to light. 

 She vomited what the author terms "coffee-ground substance" 

 several times. She recovered, but with impaired vision. 



Taken collectively, all the symptoms of poisoning enu- 

 merated distinctly show that quinine is no exception in respect 

 to the effects of drugs recorded in the second chapter, and yet 

 we meet with ample testimony to the effect that this alkaloid 

 checks the migration of leucocytes. At first sight, therefore, 

 it would seem that the stimulation of the adrenals which qui- 

 nine undoubtedly induces cannot be considered as the under- 

 lying factor of leucocytosis, and that the increment of tissue 

 metabolism attributed to the adrenal overactivity supposed to 

 account for the symptoms referred to has no part in their 

 production. The experiments of Binz, Kerner, Cutter, Hare, 

 and Martin 12 not only distinctly show the inhibiting effect of 

 quinine upon leucocytes, but also that in sufficiently strong 

 solution it may arrest their amoeboid movement: the sine qua 

 non of phagocytic action. Analyzed more closely, however, the 

 question assumes another aspect. 



Although these investigators were necessarily working in 

 the dark as regards the governing influence of exact do 

 and the results reported thus lose much of their value for the 

 present analysis, they nevertheless furnish many elucidative 

 data. Binz, for instance, using the method of Colmheim. 

 curarized the frogs used for the experiment, so that the ani- 

 mals' adrenals were not only submitted to the influence of one 

 toxic, but of two: curare and quinine. That the animals were 

 already suffering from the effects of adrenal insufficiency when 

 their mesentery was exposed upon the stage of the micro- 



u A. E. Roberts: Lancet, March 9, 1895. 

 H. C. Wood: Lor. cit., p. 534. 





