[ddsteps-user] R artificial food. Thick sop, and many other articles often given as food are as

[Pistole S. <acc...@ro...>]

X and multiplication of leucocytes to
engulf and destroy septic bacilli which have gained

entrance from the air, a 'local war' of defence. The

issue of this pitched battle will depend on the relative
number and activity of the respective hosts. Inflammation

round a poisoned wound is an evidence of vital power and a means of
protecting the system at large from invasion and devastation. If this
first line of defence
is broken through, the bacilli pass through the lymphatic
spaces and ducts to the glands, and another battle ensues which
produces glandular swelling and inflammation and possibly abscess. This
second
line of defence may be insufficient and then we
get general septicaemia. It is now well proven that the injury is done,
not by the bacilli themselves but by the toxines which they secrete or
excrete. Dr. Broadbent very properly points out that the action
of the bacilli of fever in the body is strictly comparable to the
action of yeast in a fermentable liquid. The yeast cells grow and
multiply at the expense of the sugar, in destroying which they produce
alcohol, carbonic dioxide and other substances. When the alcohol
amounts to some 17 per cent. of the liquid the process is stopped by
the

poisonous action of the alcohol on the yeast cells. In just the same

way the toxines produced by the
bacilli at length stop their further multiplication and put an end to
the disease. Alcohol is in fact, the
toxine produced by yeast, and, like many other toxines, it is not only
poisonous to cells which produce it, but to any animal into whose veins
it may happen to get.
"There can be little doubt that the state of immunity which one attack
of certain fevers confers
against future attacks depends

partly upon
what is called the phagocytic action of leucocytes. These
have been actually observed to draw into their
interior and destroy bacilli which would

otherwise have multiplied and produced their special effects. There can
be little doubt, either, that we
are continually taking