626 THE INTERNAL SECRETIONS AND IMMUNITY. 



of micro-organisms could be attributed to phagocytosis, and 

 expressed the view, therefore, that the bactericidal power could 

 only reside in the serum. 



In the light of the functions herein attributed to the 

 adrenal system, this conclusion might appear fallacious; but 

 it is not so when reduced to appropriate limits. An important 

 feature of suprarenal functions, in this connection, must be 

 emphasized: i.e., that their normal activity seems only to l)e 

 heightened to a subjectively and objectively appreciable level 

 when a certain degree of toxcemia has been reached. In other 

 words, the symptoms of which the adrenal system is the cause 

 seem always to be due to the presence in the blood of poisons, 

 venoms, toxins, etc., in sufficient quantities to defy the normal 

 local cellular and humoral systems of defense. Hence the total 

 absence of adrenal symptoms noted after the use of remedies 

 when the dose administered is sufficiently small. And yet, if 

 our views are sound, we are no longer dealing with the entire 

 body as the basis of our estimates concerning the physiological 

 action of drugs, but with a single organ: the anterior pituitary 

 body. To this organ, no larger than a small pea, and its func- 

 tional fluctuations, must now be ascribed a long list of general 

 phenomena which we have all been taught to ascribe to the 

 direct action of our remedies upon the blood and the tissues 

 at large. It is this diminutive organ that all toxics of various 

 kinds attack, but only provided they are allowed to reach it by 

 the defensive cells and chemical bodies, with which, as we will 

 see, the blood-plasma is amply supplied. But its protective 

 offices are not called into use merely when toxics are ingested 

 or introduced into the blood-stream by contamination; it is 

 exercised at all times. We have in physiological leucocytosis 

 evidence of this fact, for this phenomenon merely shows that 

 after active physical exercise, a sufficient or copious meal, a- 

 cold bath, etc., waste-products of metabolism have accumulated 

 in the tissues to an abnormal extent, and that the greater oxi- 

 dation which unusual adrenal activity can procure has become 

 necessary. This lasts as long as required, and the adrenals 

 resume their relatively passive state. It thus becomes evident 

 that the blood-serum is an important factor of the protective 

 process. 



