DISCOVERY 



69 



as regards individual resistance, but trust that their 

 billions will include a few individuals which can success- 

 fully withstand the attacks made by the host : from 

 these survivors a fresh population can be generated in 

 a time which is very short on the scale used by the 

 host, and this new population will have the special 

 properties of resistance of its progenitors. It would be 

 impossible for a relatively sparse, slowly -multiplying 

 animal like man to proceed along these lines with any 

 chance of success in competition with bacteria. The 

 breeding out of selected races has, of course, happened in 

 man and the higher animals. Infectious diseases are 

 constantly killing off the more susceptible individuals, 

 and raising the average resistance of the population, 

 but the process is painfully slow. In India, for example, 

 plague has killed a pretty substantial proportion of the 

 human and rat populations since it reached Bombay 

 twenty-five years ago. Any increase in human resist- 

 ance to plague can only now be just beginning, and is 

 certainly at present imperceptible. It is known, how- 

 ever, that the resistance of the rat population of India 

 to plague was very much increased ten years ago, and 

 the plague bacillus is no doubt constantly engaged in 

 breeding out resistant races every week during the 

 epidemics. But higher animals have had to supple- 

 ment race resistance by individual resistance, and the 

 latter becomes progressively more important as species 

 become larger and hence less numerous and more 

 slowly multiplying. Sick men are characteristically 

 individualistic in their outlook, and it is from their 

 point of view that the problems of resistance have 

 been mostly examined. 



Taking such a survey of the animal series as our 

 ignorance allows, it seems as if the production of anti- 

 bodies appears as a regular procedure only among 

 mammals and birds. It may well be that this is associ- 

 ated with the greater powers of multiplication enjoyed 

 by parasites living at the high temperature of warm- 

 blooded animals. Among cold-blooded vertebrates 

 and invertebrates the production of antibodies seems 

 to be weak and occasional, often absent altogether. 

 Phagocytosis, on the other hand, occurs freely and 

 imiversaUy except amongst animals that are so simple 

 that it is hardly possible for anatomical reasons ; it is 

 evidently a fundamental and primitive mode of resist- 

 ance to any particulate foreign matter. The capacities 

 for multiplication of all these lower animals and their 

 nvunerical abundance are in general substantially and 

 often immensely greater than those of mammals and 

 birds ; an oyster produces anything from i to loo 

 million young in a year, and oysters are content to rely 

 on their nimibers and their few exceptional individuals 

 to pull them through, which is more than man does 

 when he sees the results of the census. 



Plants, which are subject to a number of cUseases 



due to bacteria and more caused by fungi and other 

 parasites, proceed on somewhat similar lines. There is 

 no satisfactory evidence of antibody formation or of 

 phagocytosis. In many cases their resistance is on 

 the surface in the form of coatings of wax and other 

 things which make it difficult for the parasite to get 

 inside. In other instances, parts of the plant which are 

 infected are discarded, e.g. the leaves in hollyhock 

 disease. Of any active opposition to a parasite, once 

 it has gained entrance, there is very little evidence, 

 and the average plant relies for its survival — i.e. the 

 survival of its race — on its powers of multiplication. 

 The number of seeds may be very large ; a plantain 

 produces only some 14,000. In many cases this is sup- 

 plemented by other modes of non-sexual growth, such 

 as underground tubers and shoots. The facility with 

 which races of plants resistant to disease may be secured 

 by deliberate selective breeding of the natural varia- 

 tions has been abundantly demonstrated by the 

 achievements of agriculturists in the production of 

 wheats immune to rust. 



This consideration of comparative immunity em- 

 phasises particularly clearly one of the apparently 

 fundamental differences between the working of the 

 real world and that of the dead background on which it 

 moves. In the latter, processes and mechanisms are 

 the dominating features. In the former, what is con- 

 stant and regular is the end which is achieved, and 

 the means and mechanism by which it is attained are 

 seen to be variable and inconstant. The mechanisms 

 of immunity are multiform ; the uniform thing is the 

 survival which is their end. 



A convenient account of, and guide to, the literature of 

 immunity will be found in Muir and Ritchie's Bacteriology. 



The Famine Conditions 



in Western Russia and 



Eastern Poland 



By Major W. T. Blake 



Conditions in Russia are such, at the present time, 

 that numbers of people, variously estimated at from 

 eight to fourteen miUions, are gradually but surely 

 dying tlirough starvation, disease, cold, and lack of 

 housing. It was with a view to investigating these 

 conditions that I recently flew from London to Warsaw 

 and then made my way by rail, motor, and farm-cart 

 through Eastern Poland and Western Russia. 



The immediate cause of the present state of affairs 

 is undoubtedly Bolshevism. When the Soviets were 

 formed, the Bolshevists set about a thorough and 

 systematic destruction of property ; food, houses. 



