Infection and resistance : an exposition of the biological phenomena underlying the occurrence of infection and the recovery of the animal body from infectious disease, with a consideration of the principles underlying specific diagnosis and therapeutic measures / by Hans Zinsser.

  • Zinsser, Hans, 1878-1940.
Date:
1923
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Infection and resistance : an exposition of the biological phenomena underlying the occurrence of infection and the recovery of the animal body from infectious disease, with a consideration of the principles underlying specific diagnosis and therapeutic measures / by Hans Zinsser. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tolerance (immunity) against drugs is due to cellular rather than to serum antagonism. In this connection we refer the reader to the section on Drug Idiosyncrasies. The Origin of Antibodies.—The tissue cell, as the ultimate func- tional unit, must, of course, be looked upon as the source from which originate the various protective constituents of normal and immune sera; and, though perhaps unrecognizable by the coarse tests of morphological investigations, it is in the cells that changes must take place primarily when the animal body is subjected to any one of the processes spoken of as immunization. The exact location of the antibody-forming cells and tissues, in spite of much investigation, is not at all clear, though many data seem to point to the lymphatic organs, the spleen, and the bone marrow as particularly concerned with this process. Thus Pfeiffer and Marx95 exsanguinated animals five days after injections of dead cholera spirilla and found that at this time bac- teriolytic antibodies were more concentrated in the spleen than in the blood serum itself. Wassermann’s 96 analogous experiments with typhoid bacilli seemed to show a higher antibody content in spleen, bone marrow, thymus, and lymph nodes than was present in the blood at an early period of immunization. Although these investiga- tions, as well as many others of Castellani,97 seem, therefore, to indi- cate a particular association of the special lymphatic organs with antibody formation,08 extirpation of the spleen 90 before immuniza- tion has not prevented animals from responding to injections of bac- teria and red blood cells with sharp antibody production. The ex- periments of Deutsch,100 in which reduction of antibody formation resulted in animals in which splenectomy was practiced three or four days after immunization was begun, can hardly be accepted as a con- clusion, in the writer’s opinion at least, since any severe operation or interference with the normal functions of an animal during the severe physiological strain of active immunization would naturally lead to a less perfect response. That the resistance of animals and man to infection with bacteria is not noticeably diminished by sple- nectomy, moreover, has been variously shown. In unpublished experiments by the writer splenectomized guinea pigs showed no difference from normal animals in regard to their susceptibility to tuberculosis. And though these and similar experiments of otliei workers with various bacteria are not entirely devoid of interest, their negative results as a matter of fact have no great significance, »s Pfeiffer and Marx. Zeitschr. f. Ili/g., Vol. 27, 1898. 9B Wassermann. Her/. klin. Work., p. 209, 1898. 97 Castellani. Zeitschr. f. ling., Vol. 87, 1901. 98 Pfeiffer and Marx. hoc. cit. ,,u 1. Levin. Jour. Med. lies., Vol. 8, 19012.