752 INTERNAL SECRETIONS AND PRESERVATION OP LIFE. 



sera alone, which contain little else than the immune body or 

 the binding substance. ... He found that normal serum 

 from cattle (beef) could be used with typhoid immune serum 

 e.g., that guinea-pigs injected with three loops of living culture 

 (typhoid) and in a half-hour with 0.5 cubic centimeter of ty- 

 phoid immune serum mixed with 4 cubic centimeters of fresh 

 normal ox-serum, all survived in good health, while control ani- 

 mals injected with normal serum or immune serum alone all 

 died in twenty-four hours." 87 This series of experiments seems 

 to us to demonstrate the correctness of our views. Indeed, it 

 is obvious that, while the immune serum furnished trypsin, the 

 normal serum furnished fibrinogen (the oxidizing substance being 

 too limited in quantity to add energy to the animal's living 

 blood); this fibrinogen, by combining with the oxidizing sub- 

 stance in the injected animal's blood, liberated enough heat to 

 raise the trypsin's energy to the required level, and it chem- 

 ically dissociated not only the bacteria, but their toxins. 



But herein lies the adjustment to which we have referred: 

 WidaPs test has enabled us to show that fibrinogen is precisely 

 the missing agency in typhoid fever; the ox-serum, therefore, 

 supplied this substance. But we have also seen that it is the 

 only disease in which the fibrinogen is lacking to such a marked 

 degree, and that Widal's test owes its value to this fact. What, 

 then, about all other diseases? 



If the morbid process in typhoid fever is now traced to 

 its source, it will become evident that it is partly ascribable to 

 inhibited phagocytosis, and not altogether to the fact that the 

 number of cells that are able to take up proteids in the intes- 

 tinal canal is more or less reduced. Fibrinogen is thus inade- 

 quately furnished to the blood-stream. Indeed, were the cells 

 produced, as they are when leucocytosis occurs, even though 

 they could not reach the intestinal foodstuffs, fibrinogen would 

 be formed in the neutrophile cells. In the light of the analysis 

 we have submitted, the heat which energizes the trypsin in the 

 digestive vacuole of a phagocyte is mainly due to the reaction 

 between the nuclein of its nucleus and the oxidizing substance 

 absorbed by the cell with the plasma. The cell, therefore, does 

 not require fibrinogen, but the bacteria it ingulfs are them- 



87 All italics are our own. 



