730 INTERNAL SECRETIONS AND PRESERVATION OF LIFE. 



which is afterward lost, of absorbing these substances in an 

 active state. The relative richness of the suckling's blood in 

 protective anti-bodies, as contrasted with the artificially fed 

 infant, explains the greater freedom of the former from in- 

 fectious diseases:" Evidently the importance we have attached 

 to the immunizing constituents of the mother's milk was not 

 groundless. What a holocaust of lives to be charged to the so- 

 called infant-foods T 



Finally, the general protective process as we have con- 

 ceived it seems to us sustained. We have suggested that accu- 

 mulation in the blood of toxic waste-products occurred when, 

 owing to advanced insufficiency of the adrenals, the oxidizing 

 substance was inadequately formed. Obviously, the reduction 

 of all oxidation processes inhibits leucocy to genesis and the spleno- 

 pancreatic functions, and, as a result, bacteria, their toxins, 

 toxic waste-products, etc., are no longer antagonized. "One of 

 the earliest results of the systematic bacteriological examina- 

 tions which we make at all necropsies at the Johns Hopkins 

 Hospital," writes Professor Welch, "was the recognition of the 

 great frequency of terminal infections, formerly often unde- 

 tected by the clinician, in chronic diseases, particularly of the 

 heart, the blood-vessels, and the kidneys. Dr. Longcope finds, 

 although not regularly, still in many cases of these diseases, a 

 marked reduction in the quantity of complements, which may 

 amount to a total loss of the colon complements. The analysis 

 of the cases brings out unmistakably a definite relation between 

 this loss of complement and the predisposition to infection." 



If the full meaning of these few quotations is grasped, it 

 will become apparent that the newer conceptions we have in- 

 corporated in this work are vividly reflected in the modern con- 

 tributions to our knowledge of immunity. 



The adrenal system, as suggested by the foregoing quota- 

 tions, stands out prominently in all problems concerned with 

 immunity. The oxidizing substance may be said, therefore, to 

 occupy the same relative position. 



Bordet in a series of exhaustive experiments 65 ascertained 

 that the destruction of bacteria was due to the action of two 



66 Bordet: Annales de 1'Institut Pasteur, vol. ix, 1895, and vol. x, 



