Page 116 - My FlipBook

the involuntary muscles carry on their action ; the animal
may live in a state of comparative death, unconscious, in-
capable of any motion for two or three days, and then re-
cover completely, or if the dose is too great the animal may
die. I have kept frogs under the influence of curara for two
or three days at a time with a single dose could handle them
in any way I pleased ; apparently dead, and yet they recov-
ered.
Now, the production of disease by the poisons produced
by micro-organisms growing in the tissues is different in
this : That it is a slow, continuous instillation of the poison
into the system, into the fluids of the body. Not a single
dose given at once that may pass away, but as the micro-
organisms are growing in the tissues or in the secretions or
in the juices, in the flesh, they are continually forming these
poisons and they are continually being distributed in the
system. The efifect comes on comparatively slowly and in-
creases in intensity until the animal is sick. Often these pro-
duce special results. The results are different for each dif-
ferent poison. The intensity increases from day to day ; in
some cases from week to week, and in some of the rarer
cases from month to month, being slow in their progress and
producing usually a definite set of symptoms with progres-
sive emaciation, with progressive depression or progressive
effect of whatever kind the poison may produce. This is not
an effect, as I have said before, simply of the physical pres-
ence of the micro-organisms, but the effect of a drug, or a
poison formed by them in the performance of their physio-
logical processes which is instilled into the system. In pus
formation, of which I have spoken before, we get the physio-
logical effect of the leucomaines produced by the organisms
aside from the solution of the exudates by their enzymes, an
effect which is noted particularly upon certain nerve centers
in the brain, interfering with heat production and heat dissi-
pation, for this matter of heat production and heat dissipa-
tion is under the control of the nervous system and it is
interfered with in such a way that we get fever. In any case
where there is a considerable area involved in the growth of
micro-organisms of this nature, causing pus formation, we
have this accompaniment of fever. Take the case of typhoid
fever. Here we have a very peculiar effect upon the nervous

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