Antipathy

“ In the well-known cases of deadly antipathy which have been recorded, the most frequent cause has been the disturbed and depressing influence of the centre of inhibition. Fainting at the sight of blood is one of the commonest examples of this influence. A single impression, in a very early period of atmospheric existence,—perhaps, indirectly, before that period, as was said to have happened in the case of James the First of England,—may establish a communication between this centre and the heart which will remain open ever afterwards. How does a footpath across a field establish itself? ”

“ It is not uncommon to meet with persons who faint at the sight of blood. One of the most inveterately pugnacious of Dr. Butts's college-mates confessed that he had this infirmity. Stranger and far more awkward than this is the case mentioned in an ancient collection, where the subject of the antipathy fainted at the sight of any object of a red color. There are sounds, also, which have strange effects on some individuals. ”

“ An antipathy looked dead in the face is always pointless. I was not challenged by Corporal F——; and as corporal, I never saw him after that night. I never knew his name; and it is quite probable that five years afterward I passed my wine to him in that same old antiquated town. There was a face at our hotel that reminded me very much of Corporal F——; but with five years, my antipathy had gone, and my tom-cat was a very clever companion. ”

“ There was nothing strange, then, that Maurice Kirkwood should have his special antipathy; a great many other people have odd likes and dislikes. But it was a very curious thing that this antipathy should be alleged as the reason for his singular mode of life. All sorts of explanations were suggested, not one of them in the least satisfactory, but serving to keep the curiosity of inquirers active until they were superseded by a new theory. ”

“ But this antipathy is well founded only if the pessimism that is objected to is out of accord with the facts. The physician who comforts the patient by a false diagnosis is pleasing for the moment; but the true friend and helper is the one who designates the disease by its true name. ”

“ Ever since the fatal night, the end of my labours, and the beginning of my misfortunes, I had conceived a violent antipathy even to the name of natural philosophy. When I was otherwise quite restored to health, the sight of a chemical instrument would renew all the agony of my nervous symptoms. Henry saw this, and had removed all my apparatus from my view. ”

“ Whether it would have continued to abate until it disappeared, as such antipathies often disappear, under the familiarities of prolonged intercourse, without any immediate appeal to my amour propre, I know not; but every reflective mind, conscious of being accessible to antipathies, will remember that one certain method of stifling them is for the object to make some appeal to our interest or our vanity: in the engagement of these more powerful feelings, the antipathy is quickly strangled. ”

“ When a young lady screams at the sight of a spider, we accept her explanation that she has a natural antipathy to the creature. When a person expresses a repugnance to some wholesome article of food, agreeable to most people, we are satisfied if he gives the same reason. And so of various odors, which are pleasing to some persons and repulsive to others. We do not pretend to go behind the fact. It is an individual, and it may be a family, peculiarity. ”

“ Fourthly, Since the meats, to which particular persons have an antipathy, and from which they receive violent ill effects, are, in general, highly grateful to others, one may perhaps conjecture, that the vibrations excited by these meats in the stomachs of those who have an antipathy to them, do but just pass the limits of pleasure ”

“ He had talked naturally and pleasantly with the young man he had helped out of his dangerous situation when his boat was upset. Dr. Butts heard that he had once made a short visit to this young man, at his rooms in the University. It was not misanthropy, therefore, which kept him solitary. What could be broad enough to cover the facts of the case? Nothing that the doctor could think of, unless it were some color, the sight of which acted on him as it did on the individual before mentioned, who could not look at anything red without fainting. Suppose this were a case of the same antipathy. ”

“ For what can more partake of the mysterious than an antipathy spontaneous and profound, such as is evoked in certain exceptional mortals by the mere aspect of some other mortal, however harmless he may be, if not called forth by this very harmlessness itself? ”

“ It acts sometimes through the senses, sometimes through the imagination, sometimes through an unknown channel. The relations which exist between the human being and all that surrounds him vary in consequence of some adjustment peculiar to each individual. The brute fact is expressed in the phrase “One man's meat is another man's poison.”
In studying the history of antipathies the doctor began with those referable to the sense of taste, which are among the most common. ”

“ The symptoms were very much like those of malignant fever, such as distress about the region of the heart, difficulty of breathing, collapse of all the vital powers, threatening immediate death. From these first symptoms the child rallied, but his entire organism had been profoundly affected by the venom circulating through it. His constitution has never thrown off the malady resulting from this toxic (poisonous) agent. ”

“ At the end of twenty days’ injections they found they could obtain such a large quantity of anti-rabic substance in the serum of an animal, that even 1 part of serum to 25,000 of the body weight would protect an animal. This process differs from that of Pasteur in so far as that in place of promoting the formation of the antidote within the body of the patient, by a process of vaccination with progressively stronger and stronger virus, this part of the process is carried on in an animal, Babes using the dog and Centanni the sheep, the blood serum of which is injected. ”

“ There is another word, “antidote,” which has very materially changed its significance during the lapse of centuries. Galen, for example, employed this word as a synonym of pharmakon—a simple remedial agent, and medical writers continued using the term in this sense during the following thirteen or fourteen centuries. The word commonly employed, by mediaeval physicians, to signify “pharmacopoeia,” was “antidotarium.” In modern times the word “antidote” signifies only an agent which neutralizes a poison. ”

“ That an attack of certain diseases leaves the patient immune to that disease for a longer or shorter time has of course been known for centuries, but it is a modern discovery that a specific poison induces the body to produce a specific antidote which neutralizes it, and the detailed working out of this principle and the study of the means by which the immunity is brought about promise to lead us a long way towards the central problem of the nature and activities of life itself. ”

“ When the infectious disease is the expression not of the combined effects of poison and bacteria but of the poison chiefly which enters the blood, the bacteria remaining without as in diphtheria, then the blood changes characterizing the immune state are simpler and consist in the accumulation there of antitoxins that constitute the most perfect antidote to poisons that are known. The condition of immunity produces no demonstrable change in the properties of the phagocytes through which they are better enabled to overcome the poisonous bacteria. ”

“ Now, if the cells in your body make antitoxin when you have diphtheria, it is probable that antitoxin is the very thing needed. And if you can help these cells by giving them antitoxin, ready-made, does it not seem a reasonable thing to do? People who give the name of poison to a substance which is known to have saved many lives are not worthy of attention. Anything may prove a poison if taken in excess; too much play will prove a poison, and too much work also. ”

“ The Antiphlogistic is a term applied to medicines, plans of diet, and other circumstances, that tend to oppose inflammation by a diminution of the activity of the vital powers, whereby the inflammation is subdued, and nature rights herself again of her own accord. The Specific implies a reliance upon a particular remedy, which is supposed at once to set about curing the disease, as, for instance, by giving Bark in Ague—Colchicum in Rheumatism—Cubebs or Copaiba in Gonorrhœa. ”

“ I have frequently administered much larger doses in cases of inflammation of the lungs without ill effect. Two grains is by no means an unusual dose when intended to act as an emetic; but the action of antimony varies greatly with different constitutions. Having certified ourselves of the presence of the suspected poison, the question was, as to the person by whom it had been administered. The Baron said he had no doubt that it was a trick on the part of the servant maid, between whom and her mistress there had been some dispute a few days since. ”

“ Underneath all this storm and stress of the fever paroxysm, nature is quietly at work elaborating her antidote. In some marvelous fashion, which we do not even yet fully understand, the cells of the body are producing in ever-increasing quantities an anti-body, or antitoxin, which will unite with the toxin or poison produced by the hostile germs and render it entirely harmless. By a curious paradox of the process, it does not kill the germs themselves. It may not even stop their further multiplication. Indeed, it utilizes part of their products in the formation of the antitoxin ”

“ Why and how does one attack of a certain disease protect against another? When a person is taken sick with one of these diseases, the cells of his body immediately begin to make a substance called antitoxin. We learned something about antitoxin when we were studying diphtheria. In diseases like scarlet fever, measles, and smallpox, in which one attack protects against another, the antitoxin that is formed in the body when you are sick stays there for a long time, in some cases as long as you live. While this antitoxin is present in the blood, the cause of the disease cannot live in the body ”

“ In modern medicine at its best, some substance, such as the diphtheria antitoxin, that is already present in the blood in quantity sufficient under ordinary circumstances to prevent infection, is reënforced in an emergency by more of the same substance prepared in the blood of the horse. Or if that cannot be done, the next best thing is to inject some serum that by a natural reaction will stimulate the body to prepare in excess its own antitoxin or excite the phagocytes to greater exertions in overcoming their enemies. ”

“ From the study of the processes by which immunity is secured against the effects of bacterial action the serum and vaccine methods of treating certain infective diseases have been evolved. The _serum treatment_ is designed to furnish the patient with a sufficiency of antibodies to neutralise the infection. The anti-diphtheritic and the anti-tetanic act by neutralising the specific toxins of the disease--_antitoxic serums_; the anti-streptcoccic and the serum for anthrax act upon the bacteria--_anti-bacterial serums_. ”

“ A patient treated with the corrosive sublimate of mercury is perhaps more subject to recurrence of the affection, after imprudent exposure, for a considerable time afterwards, than if simple and less powerful means had been employed. A cure can often be effected by the exhibition of the compound decoction of the woods, with or without antimony. Moderate diet and strict abstinence from wine and other internal stimulants should be enjoined; the patient, soon experiencing the good effects of temperance, is exceedingly willing to restrict himself to a somewhat antiphlogistic regimen. ”

“ Immunity, acquired naturally, is so especially against microbes and not against toxins, for, in nature, it is almost always by microbes that the organism is threatened. As to antitoxic immunity, it is very probably due to the intracellular digestion of toxins by the different macrophages. This hypothesis is supported by the experiments quoted in the preceding chapter. During antitoxic vaccination, the macrophages manufacture, probably at the expense of vaccinal toxins, a certain quantity of antitoxins, substances which offer a great similarity with the fixators. ”

“ The question of the value of preventive inoculation is, however, still an open one. So also are other applications of the principles of immunity, as the production of anti-sera for snake-venom, and for the irritant (and perhaps intoxicating) vegetable agent causing hay fever.
I have earlier in this lecture referred to methods of serum diagnosis depending on agglutination or solution of bacteria or on the precipitation of protein. Immunology has recently contributed to medicine another diagnostic method of great value. ”

“ On account of the depression of the heart's action, which is its chief symptom, it is often very desirable to cause nausea in acute inflammations and fevers. It is kept up by the careful administration of Tartar Emetic. It may not be so desirable to produce vomiting; for this is accompanied with great vascular excitement and active congestion of the brain. And yet it is found that the more Antimony we can get into the blood, the more potent and durable will its antiphlogistic influence be. For this medicine appears to possess a blood-action as well as an action on nerve. ”