Читать книгу Good Health and How We Won It, With an Account of the New Hygiene - Michael Williams - Страница 8

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And this definitely brings us to the other kind of inhabitants of the human blood, the leucocytes, or white blood corpuscles,—and so to the germ theory of health, which science is showing to be no less true than the germ theory of disease. In their natural state these cells are transparent, spherical forms of the consistency of jelly drops, which float in the bloodstreams or creep along the inner surface of the vessel. Their function was for a long time not understood; the discovery of the real facts, perhaps the most epoch-making discovery ever made concerning the human body, the world owes to the genius of Metchnikoff, the head of the Pasteur Institute of Paris. These cells are the last reserves of the body in its defense against the assault of disease. Whenever, in spite of all opposition, the hostile germs find access either to the blood or to the tissue, the white cells rush to the spot, and fall upon them and devour them.

In their fight against the hordes of evil bacteria that invade the blood, where the battles are waged, the body’s defenders have four main ways of battling. Again we quote from Dr. Ayers: “The blood covers some germs with a sticky paste, and makes them adhere to one another, thereby anchoring them so that they become as helpless as flies on fly paper. The paste comes from the liquid of the blood, the plasma. Another blood-weapon (the ‘lysins’) dissolves the germs as lye does. A third means of defense is the ability of the white blood corpuscles to envelop and digest the living germs. One white cell can digest dozens of germs, but it may mean death to the devouring cells.

The fourth and recently discovered weapon, or ammunition, of the blood is the opsonins. Wright and Douglas in London in 1903 coined the word, which comes from the Latin opsono: “I cook for the table,” “I prepare pabulum for.” This is precisely what the opsonins do in the blood. They manifest this beneficial activity when invading disease germs appear. They attract white blood cells to the germs and make the bacteria more eatable for the cells. They are appetizers for the white blood cells; or sauces, which help the white blood cells to eat more of the bacteria than they could do without this spur to their hunger. Wright and Douglas demonstrated beyond peradventure the ability of the white blood cells to eat a larger number of bacteria when the latter are soaked in opsonins. They also showed that this opsonic sauce, or appetizer, which stimulates the blessed hunger of the white blood cells for disease bacteria, could be artificially produced, and hypodermically introduced into a patient’s blood, thus increasing that blood’s power of defense by raising the quantity of opsonins. They also worked out a practical laboratory technique by means of which the opsonins can be measured, or counted, with a considerable degree of exactitude, thereby making it possible to estimate within limits of accuracy any one’s ability to resist bacterial invasions. If the blood is rich in opsonins, its power to fight disease is strong. Opsonins are now inoculated into the blood at several institutions, notably McGill University in Montreal, and at the Battle Creek Sanitarium.