We, each of us, have our special ties—shall I say hobbies? One of us making the eye a specially will make use of ophthalmological terms. Another turns his attention to the technology of animal tissues, and still another, with an eye towards the bacteriological existences, leads us into a labyrinth of Greek and Latin technics.
We are talking of ptomaines and leucomaines, and that their existence is probably due to bacteria. These are regarded as toxines, and certain diseases are said to be caused by these toxines, and not from the bacteria themselves directly, but indirectly. I appreciate the idea that the curative results of these diseases are due to the antagonism of the remedies to these toxines, and not to the destruction of the bacteria. Before we inquire into the curative action of remedies we must first find out how these toxines produce disease. The tendency is to trace the origin of all disease to a change in the protoplasmic cells. This change is evidently due to a toxine. A healthy physiological change in the cells may be termed metabolism, while an unhealthy or pathological change may be termed katabolism. The question arises, in what way does katabolism arise from these toxines? It occurs to me that it must be due to chemical affinity, or as it is sometimes very properly called, chemism.
In a brief but very excellent article on therapeutic action by Dr. Thomas J. Mays, of Philadelphia, in the American Therapist, he commences thus: “Every phenomenon in nature becomes intelligible only when considered in the light of force. Any scientific system of therapeutics must therefore be built on a broader basis than that of the mere drug action on the animal economy.” In this he is unquestionably correct; but when he, along with others, asserts that drug action is due to what is termed “interference,” to me, at least, he becomes unintelligible. I am utterly unable to take in the idea. When he refers it to molecular motion, which, after all, is chemical change, he is right. Heat, light, electricity, motion—each interchangeable, correlating with each other, constituting force—must be the source of all chemical action. These are, strictly speaking, proteodynamics. They act, as I have indicated, upon the cell. This action may be either metabolic or katabolic, and when the remedial agent is presented the change results. So true is this that the vis vitæ itself results from chemism, so that every action, every change, has simply two factors—matter and dynamism.
In this connection permit me to make the following quotation from the Medical News: “Of course, it had been recognized that certain diseases are self-limited, and the phenomena of natural and acquired immunity were duly appreciated; but it required the knowledge gained by the advances in bacteriology to afford a rational explanation of these phenomena. There is yet much to learn. The beginning has but been made. Enough, however, has been seen to teach that disease has its chemistry, and that the treatment of the future will depend upon a knowledge of this fact and the application of chemic laws.”
The progressive physician does not believe that medicines cure. It is true he uses the word just as we say the sun rises and sets when we know that it does neither the one or the other, but that the phenomena are due to the revolution of the earth on its axis. The cell function is the building function, you may call it metabolism or anabolism. It is either a building or a repairing process. Now derange the process by means of toxines, and you have what may be called katabolism. The molecules are disorganized, the tissues become disorganized, and the result is impaired function. A remedy reaches the part; among the molecules of the remedy and the molecules of the protoplasmic cells chemism takes place; the toxine is antagonized, antidoted, neutralized, changed, and the metabolic process is established. This is the natural physiological process, and a healthy action results; and herein I have thought may be the secret of the action of minute doses. I will illustrate. In the chemical laboratory you have a combination of mercuric sulphate with about four-fifths its weight of chloride of sodium; and heating in a test-tube the result is mercuric chloride (HgCl{_2}), or corrosive sublimate. Repeat the experiment by using mercurous sulphate, with about a third of its weight of chloride of sodium, applying heat, and you have mercurous chloride (HgCl), calomel. Here by diminishing the amount of chlorine in one of the experiments you have quite a different result, due to quantivalence. Why, then, if the process of katabolism be chemical, may not a result be altogether different among the atoms of the molecules of the cells and of the medicine, in accordance with the law of definite proportions? If quantivalence exists among chemical radicals, why may it not exist among organic radicals?
J. F. Griffin, M.D.,
The Medical Summary, Jan., 1894.
DIGESTIVE LEUCOCYTOSIS.
Many investigators, seeking after an explanation of the methods by which nutritive material is carried from the alimentary tract to the different tissues and organs of the body, have called attention to the possible importance of the white corpuscles in the assimilation of food-stuffs, citing the fact that in a well nourished carnivorous animal there is a marked production of new cells in the lymph spaces of the intestinal mucous membrane after the ingestion of food, the extent of said production being apparently dependent upon the amount of assimilable elements contained in the food. It has been further supposed that this increased production of lymph cells is followed by a corresponding increase in the passage of leucocytes into the blood, mainly on the ground that only a comparatively few of the cells could have any local action in aiding the nutrition of the intestinal walls. There has been, however, a lack of positive proof of these assumptions until Pohl,[[2]] in his studies on the absorption and assimilation of food-stuffs, took up the matter experimentally, and sought to obtain some positive data bearing on the question. This investigator made a careful study of the physiological variations in the content of leucocytes in dog’s blood, using young animals and feeding them only one meal a day. The leucocytes were counted after Thoma’s method, preliminary experiments showing that there was very little difference in the number of white cells contained in a given volume of arterial or venous blood. Thus, in the case of a fasting animal, blood taken from the jugular vein contained 16,378 white corpuscles per cubic millimeter, while blood from the carotid artery of the same side contained 15,449 white cells per cubic millimeter. Further, from a well-fed animal, whose blood was examined during digestion, similar results were obtained, i. e., 27,036 from the jugular vein, and 26,866 from the carotid, thus showing that blood from the capillaries of either veins or arteries would give essentially the same results.
A single experiment, illustrative of the many reported by Pohl, may be given here, as showing the marked effect of food upon the number of white corpuscles in the circulating blood: