THE OPTIMISM OF PATHOLOGY 305 
assaults of microbes and poisons. Professor Adami 
writes: “As shown by Sir William Leishman’s 
simple and beautiful experiment (which formed the 
basis of Sir Almroth Wright’s opsonic technique), 
there is not one pathogenic microbe which cannot 
be shown to be taken up and digested sooner or 
later by the polymorpho-nuclear leucocytes of the 
human blood.” That our marvelously well-equipped 
bodyguard occasionally fails should not lead us to 
forget its normal success in counteracting assaults 
and intrusions. We are not at all convinced by 
Professor Adami’s arguments in support of the 
thesis that inborn capacities for resisting disease 
are the hereditary outcome of individual bodily 
adjustments in the same direction; or that evolu- 
tion, whether progressive or retrogressive, is ‘‘ the 
outcome of an active process of continuous adjust- 
ment between organisms and their environment,” 
if by “adjustment” is meant a direct reaction on 
the part of the living matter to its environment; 
but we think that he has done good service in 
calling attention afresh to the great importance of 
individual bodily modifications, the direct results of 
environmental and functional peculiarities, in show- 
ing that these are often effectively self-preservative, 
and in suggesting what still remains a rather vague 
hypothesis, that peculiarities in surrounding influ- 
ences may in some way that we do not understand 
serve as the stimuli of variations, more deeply seated 
than the dents and imprints which are technically 
called modifications. What many will find the 
