90 PROTEIN THERAPY 



culin and to prodigiosus vaccine goes up much more slowly. Repeated 

 injections of milk and of deuteroalbumose give rise to steadily augmented 

 temperature reactions, indicating a certain degree of sensitization. Then, 

 too, the fact that following the injection of heterovaccines the euphoria 

 so commonly present after the other agents is seldom noted, also indicated 

 some difference. 



It may be well to leave the question whether the plasmaactiva- 

 tion is omnicellular or organotropic and take up some of the other the- 

 ories that have been advanced to explain the nonspecific reaction. 



Effect on Thermoregulatory Mechanism. Paltauf suggests that 

 the effect might be due to thermogenic substances in the vaccine 

 injected. After the stimulation of the heat-regulating center an ex- 

 haustion might be expected, as an expression of which he regarded the 

 defervescence after nonspecific injections in acute febrile diseases. 

 This explanation, which Lowy supports, does not take into considera- 

 tion the frequent permanency of the defervescence. 



Saxl considered the hyperthermia as the vital factor which stimu- 

 lated both antibodies and leukocytes and was also directly effective 

 on the disease process. 



Roily and Meltzer have studied this question. In animals that were 

 infected with a single overwhelming dose of some infectious agent, the 

 effect of raising the temperature was not apparent in the course of the 

 disease process ; on the other hand, if the animals were infected with small 

 repeated doses and over a longer period of time it became apparent that 

 by increasing the temperature the infectious process was favorably in- 

 fluenced. The opsonic power of the serum of the fever animals was in- 

 creased over that of the controls; the bacteriolytic property was not en- 

 hanced. There seemed no difference in resistance to pure toxins but Roily 

 and Meltzer observed that the agglutinin production by the heated animals 

 was increased. Animals that were kept at a high temperature for a period 

 of over 20 days showed no parenchymatous degeneration, but did show 

 a loss of weight and were anemic. 



Liidke has determined that high temperatures per se are not damaging 

 factors in infections, for if in infectious diseases the temperature is arti- 

 ficially raised, the disease is seemingly favorably influenced. Liidke has 

 noticed, however, that on artificially increasing the temperature we may 

 activate latent organisms. He has observed that typhoid bacilli that have 

 (in convalescence) been dormant in the spleen or bone marrow, may again 

 enter the blood stream on superheating the organism, i.e., a hyperpyrexia 

 may at times be a cause of relapse in typhoid fever. 



Antibodies that had gradually disappeared after an infectious disease 

 or following immunization artificially produced, were again found in the 

 serum after any procedure that increased the body temperature, whether 

 by increasing the external temperature, influencing the thermal center 

 of the brain or by injecting pyrogenic drugs. Liidke is therefore inclined 

 to the opinion that the therapeutic effect of hot baths and sweats during 

 the course of any infectious process could be accounted for on this basis 



