ANAPHYLAXIS AND CANCER



The incubation period in anaphylaxis depends upon the dose, the type of animal used, and especially upon the nature of the antigen employed. Once “sensitized,” the organism retains an increased susceptibility to the particular poison during its entire life. A “sensitized” animal, like an “immunized” one, is no longer the same as a non-immunized individual, even though otherwise apparently enjoying good health.

On my interpretation of the facts, we have here an instance of physiological isolation, the result of an induced pathological process-an inceptional degeneration caused by the injection, or ingestion, of substances unsuitable to Symbiosis.

Amongst the easily appreciated alterations in a “sensitized” individual, we find a definite leucocytosis. According to Richet, at the end of six months, dogs injected with crepitine, have 18,000 leucocytes per c.m., instead of 10,000 the normal figure. This is abundant evidence of the far-reaching pathogenic changes that have taken place in the system, in order to cope with poison, as it also indicates the costliness of defence, which moreover, involves the danger of a conversion of friendly and symbiotic micro-organisms into parasites.

That there should be an incubation period in anaphylaxis is a great puzzle to the investigators. On the view that as a result of in-feeding, a retrogressive adaptation is taking place, however, the phenomenon is less puzzling than it looks. Nature makes no jumps. She is debarred from doing so by the very fact of linkages which the organism has established-symbiotic relations-which keep it under control and indeed make it what it is. Moreover, time is needed by the body, if it is duly to prepare an eliminative effort. The body, as it were, has to become duly aware of the presence of the poison, and subsequently, in order to cope with it efficiently to proceed to a mobilization of its defensive forces, all of which takes time and energy.

It should be remembered that in cancer, too, there is, as a rule, a long period of induction. Moreover, cancer has been artificially induced by the administration of albuminous substances of animal origin (Fibiger, Bullock and Curtis), this again pointing to an identical causation of both cancer and anaphylaxis.

As an instance of lasting injurious effects, produced by certain albuminous poisons, we get the following from Richet: “A vegetable albuminous extract of Hura crepitans so alters nutrition that at the end of three months, the animal still shows the effects of it; in general, dogs on which I have experimented, do not completely regain their former weight”.

We must remember, that frequently plants are deflected from their proper and normal metabolic processes by the rapacity of certain animals, which flout Symbiosis, (give and take) and which would exterminate the plants wholesale if the latter did not proceed, in self-defence, (though in self-deterioration) to the production of poisons and of other forms of retaliation. That vegetable substances often prove of appalling efficacy in the poisoning of animals is in itself eloquent testimony to the fact of mutual awareness of each others needs of primordial co-evolution between animals and plants, based in the first place, on mutual help. It has thus come to pass that the biological adequacy of food rests upon a genuine symbiotic basis, a basis of give and take, and not one of promiscuous appropriation; and this consideration should never be lost sight of in a dissertation on food and feeding.

The symbiotic basis, which has established itself in course of evolution, the true safeguard of health and progress. In its absence, no amount of artificial interference will ever adequately compensate for the lack of adequacy. Which is tantamount of saying that the world is a genuine economic cosmos, in which everything has on pain of disease or extinction, to fall in line with an interior righteousness.

The symptoms of anaphylaxis are essentially the same in man and in animals and this shows that we are entitled, broadly speaking, to draw the same general inferences as regards the value of feeding and of food substances in either case. What generally happens is this: “The arterial pressure is lowered, more or less, according to the general intensity of the reaction, and there is intestinal congestion. If anaphylaxis is profound, the symptoms assume a very different aspect. In this case, there is no pruritus.

The earliest effect, the first symptom, is a frequent vomiting, so prominent that in a number of cases it develops at the end of ten seconds or almost immediately after the injection, even of a very small dose. This vomiting is a characteristic criterion. It may be said that it is never absent, except in some very rare cases of extraordinarily intense anaphylaxis. In these, the animal is immediately in such a state of prostration, that it has no strength to vomit. The vomit is frothy and mixed with bile; sometimes it is faecal, and sometimes, in the severest cases, mixed with blood; for, from the beginning, there is an intense gastro-intestinal congestion”.

There is evidence in this of a violent eliminative attempt on the part of the body, a crisis which taxes its powers. The result depends upon the degree of vitality left in the creature. We are further told: “Frequently the outburst of nervous symptoms is so sudden and so evident that the colic and diarrhoea never appear. Ataxia rapidly supervenes; the animal staggers as if it were intoxicated; it becomes paraplegic, drags the hinder part of its body, and does not raise the toes of its fore-paws, thus resembling those animals whose Rolandic convolutions have been destroyed.

The pupil dilates and the eyes are dulled, and the animal assumes a state of complete mind-blindness. Respiration is quickened, and dyspnoeic; the arterial pressure is very low. Breathing soon become so harassed that death from asphyxia seems impending. The general condition is serious enough to believe death imminent, but in reality death in less than two hours is extremely rare in a dog”.

This sudden alteration of the nervous system has been called the “anaphylactic shock”. It vividly shows a kind of physiological “Landsturm” in operation-a supreme test of, and tax on vitality.

The anaphylactic poison poisons the central nervous system. It acts upon the medulla and the highest nerve centres, thereby forcing the eruption. Like a nation, the body is intent upon maintaining its individuality. Like nations, bodies succumb in the final effort, when they have sinned too long. It is pathetic to realize that frequently in the history of nations, as of individuals, nothing but imminent danger will avail to call forth adequate efforts. Did not Ruskin declare that “the life of a nation is usually, like the flow of a lava-stream, first bright and fierce, then languid and covered, at last advancing only by the tumbling over and over its frozen blocks-all men being partly “encumbered and crusted over with idle matter?”.

It is in connection with anaphylaxis in man that Prof. Richet speaks of “serum-disease.” Says he: “It must be noted that in certain instances a first injection of horse serum is quite capable of inducing such symptoms as urticaria, arthritis, nausea, vomiting, oedema, pruritus. It has even been stated that normal horse serum, the serum of horses not immunized with diphtheria toxin, can produce symptoms in predisposed individuals”.

But what it is that predisposes an individual to anaphylaxis? Evidently it is, in my biological terminology, the habit of in-feeding that does it. There arises what I would call an in-feeding diathesis which may be viewed as the equivalent of a latent anaphylactic shock. Even the non-initiated will find justification for that view from the following remarks of Prof. Richet: “It may therefore be asked if there is not such a condition as spontaneous, natural, or idiosyncratic anaphylaxis. But the word idiosyncrasy explains nothing; it would be better to suppose that there was such a condition as special anaphylaxis induced by diet.

This would practically account for the fact that symptoms invariably follow the first injection of horse serum into those who, for therapeutic purpose, take a raw horse-flesh diet. Certainly, some individuals who have never eaten raw horse-flesh, are sensitive to a first injection of horse serum; but the more or less rigorously specific limits of the anaphylactising antigen have not yet been so defined as to enable us to say that there were not in their diet substances capable of diet substances capable of developing a special anaphylactic state against horse serum. Therefore, this statement, which has been formally made, appears to us of very great importance in proving that an undoubted anaphylactic state to horse serum can be induced by horse-flesh diet.” (Italics nine).

This is admitting in a general way that in-feeding does result in liability to serum-disease, or protein-poisoning. I fully concur with Prof. Richet in supposing that there is such a condition as special anaphylaxis induced by diet; and I view the phenomenon as only one, though an important, form of retribution for feeding habits which contravene the great economic scheme on which the business of the world is conducted.

H. Reinheimer