734 INTERNAL SECRETIONS AND PRESERVATION OF LIFE. 



We must frankly claim, on the other hand, that its production 

 as oxidizing substance through the intermediary of the ad- 

 renal system has been supported in this entire work by a wealth 

 of evidence seldom equaled in the annals of medicine when an 

 entirely new line of thought was being submitted for the first 

 time. 



The oxidizing substance has affirmed its identity on all 

 sides as the reagent which, by combining with products, so to 

 say, stored in the cellular elements through the agency of 

 the leucocytes causes the liberation of functional energy. 

 Wherever in the organism we witness vital or functional phe- 

 nomena, these must be accounted for by a reaction in which the 

 oxidizing substance takes part. To insure the liberation of this 

 energy in the organism itself, the presence of the two sources 

 of energy are necessary for the reaction. When blood is re- 

 moved from the body, therefore, it is only when both are pres- 

 ent that bacteria, red blood-corpuscles, etc., can be chemically 

 disintegrated. The multitude of contradictory phenomena con- 

 nected with experimental germ- and blood-cell- destruction re- 

 corded in literature seem to us to find their explanation in the 

 fact that this fundamental feature of the processes involved has 

 been totally overlooked. 



Metchnikoff, as just stated, found that in blood removed 

 from the body, the leucocytes allow what he terms "plasmane" 

 (because it coagulates fibrin, he thinks) to pass into the liquid. 

 "At the same time," he asserts, "these cells abandon a portion 

 of their cytase, which communicates to the serum its haBmo- 

 lytic and bactericidal qualities." It is evident that M. Metch- 

 nikoff considers plasmane as the cause of coagulation of fibrin, 

 whereas we consider the cells as the source of the agent which 

 becomes coagulated by what remains of oxidizing substance in 

 the extravasated blood. In other words, what M. Metchnikoff 

 deems the causative factor of coagulation is a substance which 

 he regards as a product of the cell, whereas we consider this 

 cellular product as the one acted upon by an agency in the 

 plasma. Of course, coagulation in one sense is due to the 

 ultimate absence of oxidizing substance, because its existence 

 as fibrin is due to the fact that it is not completely consumed 

 by the oxygen. But to become coagulated at all it requires the 



