766 INTERNAL SECRETIONS AND PRESERVATION OF LIFE. 



activity of the adrenal system has been excited; but this means 

 that all organs concerned in the immunizing process, besides 

 the adrenals, the, spleen, pancreas, etc., and the various struct- 

 ures concerned in leucocytogenesis, have been roused. Indeed, 

 the period between the moment of inoculation and the entire 

 disappearance of the virus from the blood-stream represents a 

 continuous stage of greatly exaggerated function akin to that 

 to which .the subject would have been submitted had he gone 

 through the disease. The adrenal system and all the other 

 organs the functions of which it energizes, have, during all this 

 time, been the seat of unusually active nutrition, and the return 

 to their previous condition is by no means sudden. Indeed, it 

 occupies years sometimes the years during which the subject 

 is immune to the exciting agent of small-pox. Notwithstanding 

 the severity of the reaction, however, vaccination is likewise 

 benign because it does not introduce into the blood the source 

 of the poison, the micro-organism, but a minute dose of the 

 poison itself, which cannot therefore increase in quantity or 

 power. 



The foregoing conception of the manner in which pre- 

 ventive "inoculations" an unfortunate term, by the way 

 produce their beneficial effects, seems to us applicable to all 

 measures of this kind, whatever be the disease from which pro- 

 tection is sought. The recent favorable evidence recorded by 

 British army surgeons as to the use of typhoid bacillus steril- 

 ized cultures in Africa is noteworthy, for we have seen that 

 fatigue and other untoward features to which a soldier is ex- 

 posed during campaigns tend greatly to weaken the functional 

 energy of the adrenal system and, therefore, his vulnerability 

 to disease. Haffkine's preventive inoculations against plague 

 have likewise demonstrated their value, etc. Briefly, all forms 

 of vaccination endow the inoculated subject with enhanced ac- 

 tivity of the adrenal system and, therefore, of all structures 

 which take part in the defense of the body. 



Natural immunity, i.e., the innate power to resist disease, 

 is ascribable, it seems to us, to identically the same cause. Of 

 course, the susceptibility of some individuals to certain diseases 

 while they are immune to others is not to be overlooked; but this 

 introduces features of another kind that will receive attention 



