772 INTERNAL SECRETIONS AND PRESERVATION OF LIFE. 



it supplies precisely the plasmatic constituent required in that 

 disease: i.e., fibrin ogen. In all other diseases, however, apart 

 from the unquestionable usefulness of fresh serum in all dis- 

 orders of an adynafnic type to temporarily compensate for some 

 component of the blood-stream that is morbidly reduced quan- 

 titatively, the use of drugs seems to us far preferable, while 

 essentially susceptible to scientific application. The history of 

 serum-therapy fully sustains, we believe, our statement regard- 

 ing the value of sera, but the aggregate of facts we will submit 

 in another volume seems to us to demonstrate that our con- 

 fidence in the therapeutic value of drugs is not misplaced. 



If our views prove sound, we must frankly express our 

 belief that they will enable us, as physicians, to master the 

 greatest scourges of humanity. Indeed, the comparative list on 

 the opposite page will show that Asiatic cholera is in reality 

 but the gravest form of adrenal insufficiency, and that many 

 familiar morbid conditions are its prototypes, notwithstanding 

 the variety of causative factors. 



Besides hygienic means, the prevention and arrest of the 

 choleraic process and all the kindred disorders mentioned 

 resolve themselves into these few words: stimulate the adrenal 

 system. But in doing this it is necessary to remember that 

 large doses cause insufficiency, while the average therapeutic 

 dose causes stimulation. We have not been able to master 

 cholera Asiatica because no agent has been used that was 

 capable of sufficiently stimulating the adrenal system. East 

 Indian empirics have found by experience, however, that snake- 

 venom could cure cholera. We have seen how rapidly venom 

 can overwhelm the adrenal system; that we have, among our 

 alkaloids, fully as potent agencies is probable. Trial alone, 

 however, can show which of these can raise the adrenal system 

 from the depths into which the cholera toxins an aggregate 

 of them have plunged it, precisely as Baccelli's carbolic-acid 

 treatment succeeds in doing in tetanus. 



Pulmonary tuberculosis is another formidable enemy of 

 mankind which, in the light of our views, seems subject to a 

 different interpretation as regards intrinsic pathogenesis. The 

 vulnerability of the system to the bacillus of this disease is 

 readily accounted for if, as we believe, the adrenal system, 



