106 IMMUNITY AND ANAPHYLAXIS 



SUMMARY. 1. Salts introduced into the interior of an 

 organism may be assimilated or eliminated without under- 

 going any transformation because they can cross dialyzing 

 membranes. 



2. Colloids cannot be assimilated or eliminated under the 

 same conditions because they cannot cross dialyzing mem- 

 branes. 



3. Gastro-intestinal digestion results in the transforma- 

 tion of specific-colloid-albumins into salts (ammo-acids) 

 which are no longer specific and with which the organism 

 reconstructs the albumins of its species. 



4. When, as a result of incomplete intestinal digestion 

 an albumin penetrates into the interior of the organism it is 

 this interior which must achieve digestion and this doctrine 

 applies to all albumins or colloids introduced into the interior 

 either subcutaneously, intravascularly or through the 

 intestines. 



5. Cells, tissues and organs of the interior of the organism 

 are adapted only in a certain measure to this function of 

 digestion and in a given time can transform only a certain 

 quantity of albumin or of foreign colloids. Each time that 

 a cell fixes a quantity of a substance to be digested in excess 

 of what it can easily digest (phenomenon of surcharge), 

 there will be intracellular indigestion which disturbs the 

 vital functions and the physiologic state of the cell for the 

 reason that there is no method for the evacuation of the 

 undigested surplus. This is the case for toxins, ricin, abrin, 

 venins and certain sera which are directly toxic for some 

 tissues. 



6. Intracellular digestion can be explained only by an 

 attraction and fixation of the substance to be digested by a 

 substance of a cell; or by a chemical affinity between these 

 two substances, which results in the formation of a new 

 compound. When this operation is not pathogenic for the 

 cell the cell reproduces and multiples what it has lost in 

 the combination; in this way we may represent the forma- 

 tion of antibody in excess. 



7. The presence in the organism of antibody in excess in 

 the cells and in the blood, which can of itself produce certain 



