GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 131 



Specific differences are very probably determined by the 

 arrangement and by the proportions of different ammo- 

 acids, the quantities of mineral substances, iron, arsenic, 

 potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, etc., which vary 

 widely from one species to another and by the ties which 

 bind amino-acids into "micelles." 



Nutritive salts are fixed in definite proportions : the excess 

 being rapidly eliminated. Non-nutritive salts may be neutral 

 and then are rapidly eliminated but they are pathogenic 

 whenever their quantity disturbs the sol-gel equilibrium of 

 the colloids. Nutritive salts, like pathogenic salts, will not 

 produce the formation of specific antibodies because the 

 reactions between salts are innocuous and, furthermore, 

 because a salt produced in excess is rapidly eliminated. 



Colloids may also be nutritive, neutral or pathogenic but 

 only after having undergone a complete digestion, that is to 

 say, a disintegration into free molecules. They will always 

 be pathogenic, when in the colloidal state they have pene- 

 trated by any way whatever into the interior of the organism 

 which must then digest them, without being specifically 

 adapted for this function. Certain colloids (toxins) composed 

 of very small "micelles" may be directly pathogenic, when 

 they are fixed "en surcharge" to certain cells. On the 

 other hand, other colloids with more voluminous, less pene- 

 trating "micelles" do not become pathogenic until after a 

 longer or shorter incubation period, when having entered the 

 cell and distended its membrane by the multiplication of 

 normal antibodies, they become able to penetrate to ihe 

 interior of the cells. In one case as in the other the cells not 

 fatally attacked will transform the colloid antigen into nutri- 

 tious or eliminable crystalloids and will multiply the trans- 

 forming substance which will then become antibody in excess. 



This antibody in excess will be specific because the colloid 

 antigens are specific individually and the antibody will 

 accumulate in the cells and in the organism because as much 

 as we know of it, it is a colloid. The production of antibody 

 in excess is a vital reaction of the cells. Whenever the anti- 

 body in excess forms with its antigen an insoluble compound, 

 there results an increase in the degree of immunity and at 



