276 INFECTIONS OF THE DIGESTIVE TRACT 



planation of the locally deranged function, since it fails 

 to take account of the nervous mechanisms involved in 

 the localization of the urticarial wheals. 



In some persons the indulgence in a single glass of 

 champagne is followed within twenty-four hours by 

 manifestations of gout. In still others champagne 

 causes headache and the excretion of increased amounts 

 of uric acid. The explanation of these different effects 

 is to be sought in the individual cellular reactions of the 

 patient rather than in the poison. There are probably 

 many similar examples of individual susceptibility, but 

 when we come to study the question in relation to pro- 

 cesses found in the digestive tract we cannot make 

 close comparisons between different persons because we 

 cannot say what substances are being absorbed. We 

 may know that patients of a certain group are alike in 

 having intense indicanuria, but we cannot say that the 

 intoxications may not be different in these cases owing to 

 differences with respect to the absorption of other sub- 

 stances than indol. Careful research may help us to get 

 much closer to the resemblances and differences in such 

 cases. In the meantime we must content ourselves with 

 the suspicion that chronic intoxications through the 

 absorption of similar quantities of the same poisons 

 produce different effects in different persons. Among 

 half a dozen persons suffering from extreme indicanuria, 

 one suffers from headaches (sometimes migrain-like), 

 another is prone to lumbago, another, perhaps, has 

 epileptic seizures, another mental depression, another 

 progressive muscular atrophy, and still another suffers 



