July 3, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



9 



assiuued to arise. But just as uot all the 

 forms of blood injury can be ascribed to 

 the action of exogenic poisons, it is worth 

 while inquiring whether any conditions 

 may arise under which the injurious power 

 of serum may be directed against its bodily 

 organic cells. 



You will not have failed to appreciate 

 the dangerous nature of the forces inherent 

 in serum, but fortiinately for us these im- 

 plements of destruction are not turned 

 against ourselves. The protection which 

 the body exercises against these weapons of 

 offense is aptly described by Ehrlich as 

 'horror autotoxicus'— horror of self-poison- 

 ing. Were it conceivable that the body 

 should be withdrawn, for an appreciable 

 interval of time, from the operation of this 

 restraining force we might, at any moment, 

 be observed to run together and dissolve 

 in our own juices! And yet, is it wholly 

 without the realm of possible accidents that 

 in respect to some organs and in some de- 

 gree this 'horror' should be removed? I 

 can not convince myself that in the pro- 

 gressively degenerative lesions of the body 

 — those of the liver, kidney and brain, for 

 example— where through years the process 

 of destruction goes on, and where the re- 

 serve regenerative capacity normally pres- 

 ent is held in check, that this 'horror' may 

 not be in abeyance. 



The many observations upon the effects 

 of iso- and hetero-lysins— as for kidney and 

 liver cells— about which there is no reason- 

 able doubt, speaks, it seems to me, in favor 

 of such a possibility. Dr, Pearce has 

 studied through many months, in my labo- 

 ratoi-y. the action of nephrolysins, and has 

 made observations of great importance with 

 reference to experimental nephritis. The 

 results of his studies will appear in due 

 time, but I wish to refer to one fact brought 

 out by his investigations that I think of 

 especial interest. 



A large part of the studies were made 

 upon dogs, and bj' the way of preliminary 

 observation, the iirine was always examined 

 before the experiment was begun. It was 

 surprising to discover not infrequently 

 albumen and casts in the urine of dogs ap- 

 parently in the best of health; and on 

 studying the kidneys, to find marked de- 

 generation of the epithelium, and foeal 

 accumulations of cells of the plasma-cell 

 t^'pe, such as occur in man in a definite 

 form of non-suppurativc interstitial ne- 

 phritis. 



The blood serum of normal dogs infused 

 into other healthy dogs produces no symp- 

 toms nor disturbance of the renal function. 

 But the serum of a dog with spontaneous 

 nephritis gave rise to albuminuria and cast 

 excretion, such as Dr. Pearce has observed 

 in many instances of the infusion of the 

 serum of the rabbit which had been treated 

 previously with washed dog's kidneys. 



That both iso- and hetero-nephroh'sins set 

 up the lesions of acute nephritis had been 

 shown previously; but this observation of 

 Dr. Pearce is of a different order. It must 

 be considered either that some exogenic 

 toxic agent set up the renal lesions in the 

 first dog, and was present in the animal's 

 blood in such quantity that, when its sermn 

 was infused in the second animal in the 

 proportion of 1 to 500 of the body weight, 

 it sufficed to produce marked disturbance 

 of the renal function, such as is recog- 

 nized in man as due to organic lesions; 

 or that the degeneration of epithelium 

 which may be assumed to exist in the first 

 animal (which is still alive and under ob- 

 servation) provoked a series of changes 

 with the production of toxic substances 

 which for this animal are autotoxic and 

 another animal of the same species isotoxic. 

 It will not do to dogmatize about phenom- 

 ena as complex as those we are now con- 

 sidering; but if the second view expressed 



