652 THE INTERNAL SECRETIONS AND IMMUNITY. 



of chronic alcoholism, as will be shown later on, is adrenal 

 insufficiency: a fact which at once accounts for the high mor- 

 tality in such subjects. The violence of adrenal protective 

 action in lobar pneumonia is illustrated by confirmatory signs, 

 the blood-tinged expectoration, the full and bounding pulse, 

 etc. all of which suddenly cease in a few days in favorable 

 cases when the protective process has gained the mastery 

 through adequate suprarenal activity which the toxins could 

 bring on, but not overcome. 



IDENTITY OF THE PROPHYLACTIC AGENCY THROUGH WHICH 

 TOXINS ARE ANTAGONIZED IN THE BLOOD. 



After all the evidence adduced in this volume so far, we 

 deem it unnecessary to further emphasize the fact that over- 

 activity of the adrenals brings on corresponding overactivity of 

 all organs including the posterior pituitary, the general center 

 of the nervous system, by enhancing the intensity of all oxida- 

 tion processes. We still have the dominant feature of the 

 immunizing process to ascertain, however: i.e., the manner in 

 which toxins, the direct pathogenic agencies of bacterial origin, 

 are antagonized in the organism. 



Are we dealing with a special physiological agency in- 

 tended to destroy such substances? The multiplicity of patho- 

 genic organisms suggests the existence of a correspondingly 

 great number of varieties of toxins and the need of equally 

 numerous kinds of counteracting agents. In other words, the 

 question of specificity at once recurs. We have seen, however, 

 that this feature of immunity is not generally thought to be 

 subject to close limitations. While Levy and Klemperer 31 refer 

 only to exceptions to the rule, Hueppe 32 says: "Antitoxins that 

 are formed specifically in serum act in vitro upon poisons of a 

 specifically different character in the same manner as upon 

 poisons specifically similar, while the converse does not always 

 obtain; antivenin annuls the poisonous effect of abrin, but 

 not of diphtheria toxin, tetanus toxin, or ricin; antiabrin neu- 

 tralizes the toxic effect of snake-venom, diphtheria toxin, and 

 ricin, but not that of tetanus toxin; tetanus antitoxin is antag- 



81 Levy and Klemperer: Loc. cit. 



82 Hueppe: Quoted by McFarland, loc. cit. 



