mine if the immunity of the body could be raised against germs in the intestinal canal. While fifteen cases is too few to report on finally, still we have produced undoubtedly favorable results evidenced by the diminution of indican in the urine and general improvement in health.

While the results are not so satisfactory as in vaccine treatment purely within the blood supply, yet it is an advance in destroying bacterial content and a step toward intestinal antisepsis far in advance of any treatment so far. We must all admit that drugs are here practically useless. One of this series of cases demands special attention—a melancholia due to autointoxication on which all types of treatment had been tried. Abbott's intestinal antiseptic was the drug the case was found on, but on the vaccine treatment the return to normal mentality has been most pronounced. My conclusion is that with an indicanuria which denotes a proteid decomposition in the intestines, this form of treatment is more worthy of trial than all other methods.

To put you in touch with modern physiology, we must be familiar with the substances known as hormones which are activators of the functions of the digestive tract, that is, they are substances that are sent into the canal to produce the secretive result further along the tract. By this is meant that with the taking of food into the mouth, the hormone or activator of the gastric juice is set free in the stomach and it is this that results in gastric juice being poured forth. The origin of the hormones, or if not the substance itself, at least the stimulus which results in its production is one of the functions of the ductless glands. A second theory is that the glands, especially the spleen, act as storehouses for the substances until they are needed in the system. The value of this in practice is that the ductless glands and their allied nervous system, the sympathetic, are seriously affected as a result of intestinal autointoxication, and as a result the hormones are not distributed in normal amounts to the organs in the intestinal canal and as a result further stasis ensues and the vicious circle is complete.

Blum goes farther than this state and shows that the thyroid gland has the definite ability of producing a substance that neutralizes substances of a toxic nature that are absorbed from the intestine, and that it is failure to complete action when overwhelmed by the poison that results in the pernicious effects of autointoxication.

The picture of a ptosed colon with a stomach showing a marked retention six hours after the bismuth meal shows the marked effect a ptosis has on the motility of the stomach. To hesitate a minute. and consider the causal factors of gastro-coloptosis, Stiller's views at the present time seem to have more to substantiate them than

Normal Colon.

FIG. I

Cecum in its normal position well above the brim of the Pelvis. Transverse Colon crossing the abdomen above the navel. Descending Colon Sigmoid and Rectum normal.

Observe the length of the Cecum and Ascending Colon about 6 to 8 inches in length, showing ascending Colon free from draping and Pericolic membranes. Colon completely filled by the combined meal by mouth and rectal enema.

Extreme

Marked deformity and shortening of the Cecum, and ascending Colon. prolapse of the transverse Colon, the ragged irregular outline of ascending Colon is the typical appearance of Pericolic membranes. After loosening of the Pericolic membranes the Cecum readily resumed its normal length not allowed by the Pericolic membranes.