758 INTERNAL SECRETIONS AND PRESERVATION OF LIFE. 



contains no trypsin that the bacilli increase rapidly in a 

 diphtheritic child's plasma; indeed, diphtheria presents the 

 characteristic, in Jiuman beings and during life, of showing but 

 few bacteria in the blood-stream. "It is a local infection, due 

 to the presence and development of the bacilli in the pseudo- 

 membrane," writes McFarland, "but is accompanied by a gen- 

 eral toxaemia resulting from the absorption of a violently toxic 

 substance produced by the bacilli. The bacilli are found only 

 in the membranous exudation, and most plentifully in its older 

 portions." And were it otherwise, the presence of bacteria in 

 the blood-stream would not account for the absence of trypsin. 

 There is, therefore, another cause for this phenomenon. 



"We have submitted the reasons that have led us to con- 

 clude that the leucocytes, when on their way to the liver, absorb 

 the greater part of the trypsin poured into the portal system 

 by the splenic vein. The excessive hepatic functional activity 

 which accompanies a corresponding activity of the adrenal sys- 

 tem, renders the probability that any trypsin finds its way into 

 the general circulation very remote. It is, therefore, impris- 

 oned in the leucocytes. But another blood-cell has experi- 

 mentally shown considerable affinity for trypsin: i.e., the red 

 corpuscle. Indeed, Ehrlich and Morgenroth and Bordet have 

 demonstrated that the alexins are absorbed by these cells, and 

 we have seen that Metchnikoff found the active body of the 

 alexins to be trypsin. Another feature of the whole process 

 upon which Bordet lays stress is embodied in the following 

 words: "It is proper, therefore, to ascribe to the stroma the 

 property that red cells show of absorbing alexin in the presence 

 of sensitizing substance" (our oxidizing substance). 96 It thus 

 becomes evident, seeing that the blood-stream always contains 

 oxidizing substance, that whatever vestige of trypsin may 

 happen to pass beyond the portals of the liver is at once taken 

 up by the red corpuscles. That under such circumstances the 

 child's plasma should be completely deprived of trypsin is 

 evident. 



Still, why do the leucocytes, gorged with trypsin as they are, 

 not convert the toxins in the blood-stream into benign cleav- 



86 Renault: Archives Generates de M6decine, Dec., 1900. 



