The Wellcome physiological research laboratories : founded 1894, Walter Dowson ... director.

Date:
[1903?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Wellcome physiological research laboratories : founded 1894, Walter Dowson ... director. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/42 (page 7)
    exceedingly complex in composition and capable of great variation in animals of the same species under different conditions of health and disease. The same researches have demonstrated the prominence of the part played by a large number of enzymes, until lately scarcely suspected to exist, in normal as well as in pathological cell processes ; and, though the list of haemolysines and such analogous bodies as agglutinines, bacteriolysines, enzymes, antienzymes, is already long, it seems probable that blood serum is loaded with similar bodies, of which, at present, practically nothing is known. The genesis of these substances in the various organs and tissues of the body, and their interaction with the various products of cell metabolism and with each other, have still to be worked out; but sufficient progress has been made to warrant the conviction that the therapeutics of the future will deal more and more with substances derived from the animal body. It is highly unlikely that the successful treatment of myxcedema by thyroid substance will remain long unattended by the useful application of other products of the same class. Already suprarenal extract is finding employment, with results which promise well. In this connection it may be noted that an insight has been gained into the essential difference between the action of alkaloid bodies and that of highly complex proteid-like bodies, such as toxins, in the presence of cell protoplasm ; and there are legitimate grounds for hoping that, in the near future, some precise knowledge may be gathered of the distribution of pharmacologically active substances in the tissues of the body, with the result of placing on an exact basis the connection between chemical constitution, tissue location, and pharmacological action. The protoplasm of the cell, it is now clearly apprehended, is the theatre of chemical processes as numerous as they are complex; and an intimate knowledge of these in all their bearings on the animal economy, and especially such of them as are associated with external agencies, is not only of the greatest scientific interest, but also of the greatest importance when considered with respect to its influence upon the development and welfare of the human race. Already the beneficial effect of the use of diphtheria antitoxin needs no further demonstration, and antivenom serum has saved many lives. Nor are indica¬ tions wanting that continued research in the same field will, in time, yield active remedies of a similar character for enteric fever, erysipelas, pneumonia, and other kindred diseases.