[113] The other steps or phases in the process of inflammation have also been regarded as adaptive: the increased quantity of body fluid for instance is said to serve to dilute poisonous substances.
[114] See Jacoby, Immunität und Disposition, Wiesbaden, 1906.
[115] Collected Studies on Immunity by Ehrlich and his Collaborators, translated by Ch. Bolduan, New York and London, 1906.
[116] So-called genuine or innate immunity, in contrast to the immunity which is acquired, is of course a case of adaptedness only and not of adaptation. There also exists a high degree of specific adaptedness in some animals with regard to their faculty of coagulating blood. (See Leo Loeb, Biol. Bull. 9, 1905.)
[117] We cannot do more than barely mention here the problem of the localisation of anti-body production. In general it seems to be true that anti-bodies are produced by those cells which require to be protected against toxins; that would agree with the general rule, that all compensation of the change of any functional state proceeds from the part changed in its function.
[118] Here again I should like to except from this statement the discoveries of Pawlow. See page [204], note [108].
[119] The few cases of an “improvement” of morphogenetic acts in hydroids described by myself are too isolated at present to be more than mere problems (Arch. Entw. Mech. 5, 1897). The same is true, it seems to me, with regard to certain recent discoveries made by R. Pearl on Ceratophyllum (Carnegie Inst. Wash. Publ. No. 58, 1907); and by Zeleny on a medusa (Journ. exp. Zool. 5, 1907). Pawlow’s discovery, that the enzymotic composition of the pancreatic fluid in dogs becomes more and more adapted to a specific composition of the food (either meat or bread and milk) the longer such a specific composition is offered to the individual animal, may probably be understood as a case of mere functional adaptation of the cells of the digestive glands, if it stands criticism at all (see Bayliss and Starling, Ergeb. Physiol. 5, 1906, p. 682).
[120] Experiments carried out in the “Biologische Versuchsanstalt” at Vienna indeed have shown that many animal types are capable of at least a certain degree of restitution, although they had previously been denied this faculty by zoologists.
[121] Ueber das Gedächtnis als eine allgemeine Function der organischen Materie, Wien, 1870. New edition in Klassiker d. exakt. Wiss., Leipzig, Engelmann.
[122] Die Mneme, Leipzig, 1904.