Lectures on auto-intoxication in disease, or, Self-poisoning of the individual / by Ch. Bouchard ; tr., with a preface and new chapters added, by Thomas Oliver.

  • Bouchard, Ch. (Charles), 1837-1915.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on auto-intoxication in disease, or, Self-poisoning of the individual / by Ch. Bouchard ; tr., with a preface and new chapters added, by Thomas Oliver. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    micro-organisms by the fact that certain products formed within the body as the result of microbial activity react upon the micro- organisms themselves, thus limiting their longevity and dimin- ishing their power for harm. By this means man is rendered immune, and a defense is raised in the human organism against disease. How far, speaking generally, immunity is brought about by chemical or biological methods it is difficult to say. Herter (Lectures on Chemical Pathology) deals at considerable length with this important subject. He considers that the chemical defenses of the body are directed mainly against bacteria, bacterial toxins, and poi- sons other than those toxins formed during digestion, during metabolism, or introduced from without. The acidity of the gastric juice, for example, is a means of defense against certain micro-organisms; so, too, is the acidity of the urine. A much more important defense against microbes is the bactericidal ac- tion of the blood and lymph. This, according to Hankin, may depend upon the alkalinity of these fluids, or it may be due to the presence of proteids resembling enzymes derived from the leucocytes. It is common experience that during acute infectious fevers there is developed in the human body substances that destroy bacteria or their toxins. During the early stages of pneu- monia, for example, while the specific microbes or pneumococci are multiplying the patient is often extremely ill and yet hardly has the crisis been reached than, notwithstanding the continued presence of these micro-organisms in the body as revealed in the expectoration, or if the case has gone wrong in the discharge from an empyema which has unfortunately formed, the patient feels well and is little disturbed, although pneumococci are still plentiful. This feeling of well-being must depend upon either the pathogenic micro-organisms becoming destroyed by the bacterio- lytic action of the blood or upon a neutralization of the products formed by the pneumococci. It would appear that both bacterio- lytic and antitoxic effects are capable of being produced. The circulation of toxins in the blood is sooner or later followed by the development of antitoxins. Ehrlich is of the opinion that toxins unite with the protoplasm of living cells much in the same way as nutritive proteids become united to cells in the course of