782 INTERNAL SECRETIONS AND PRESERVATION OF LIFE. 



the combustion processes and simultaneously the physiological 

 consumption of the salts. 



If we now seek for a compensative supply, it soon becomes 

 evident that none is available. 



During health the sodium chloride needed by the organism 

 is ingested with the food, both as a condiment and as a con- 

 stituent of meats, vegetables, etc.; the alkaline phosphates 

 and the sulphates likewise form part of our diet, the latter 

 salts being also obtained from most drinking-waters. As to 

 the alkaline carbonates, they are products of dissociation of 

 acids ingested with vegetables and fruits. All the alkaline 

 salts referred to are thus ingested with foods or beverages. 

 During disease, on the other hand, anorexia, the restricted or 

 modified diet, etc., involve, if anything, a marked reduction 

 in the amount of alkaline salts ingested. It thus becomes evi- 

 dent that a morbid cycle exists, in this connection, pernicious 

 in the extreme to the welfare of the patient in febrile disorders, 

 because, the source of these salts being external to the organism, 

 the latter is possessed of no intrinsic reserve. Steadily, as the 

 febrile process advances, the alkaline salts are consumed, and, 

 being inadequately renewed, the vital and defensive functions are 

 increasingly hampered until life ceases. 



There is still another phase of the morbid process which 

 further increases the lethal tendency: i.e., the fact that, while 

 the alkaline salts are being reduced through the foregoing 

 factors, the increased prophylactic activity of the adrenals 

 correspondingly augments the vigor of tissue-metabolism and 

 causes accumulation of waste-products. We thus have a new 

 source of intoxication added to that incident upon the disease 

 itself. 



Besides the aggravation of all symptoms which this engen- 

 ders, a source of considerable confusion in diagnosis, this 

 complication easily accounts for a perplexing experimental re- 

 sult reported by Charrin and Langlois to which we have already 

 referred: i.e., the fact that an animal from which one adrenal 

 has been removed lives longer after pyocyaneous culture in- 

 fection than a normal animal poisoned in the same way. Op- 

 penheim 116 more recently confirmed this observation with diph- 



116 Oppenheim: Comptes-rendus de la Socit6 de Biologic, March 16, 1901. 



