erneath 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; but it domesticates them, as it were--turns
them from dangerous enemies into harmless guests.

The treaty between these germs and the body, however, is only of the
"most-favored-nation" class; for let these tamed and harmless friends of
the family escape and enter the body of another human being, and they
will attack it as virulently as ever.

Now, where and how did nature ever succeed in getting the rehearsal and
the practice necessary to build up such an extraordinary and complicated
system of defense as this? Take your microscope and look at a drop of
fluid from the mouth, the gums, the throat, the stomach, the bowels, and
you will find it simply swarming with bacteria, bacilli, and cocci, each
species of which numbers its billions. There are thirty-three species
which inhabit the mouth and gums alone! We are literally alive with
them; but most of them are absolutely harmless, and some of them
probably slightly helpful in the processes of digestion. In fevers and
infections the body merely applies to disease-germs the tricks which it
has learned in domesticating these millions of harmless vegetable
inhabitants.

Still more curious--there is a distinct parallel between the method in
which food-materials are split up and prepared for assimilation by the
body, and the method adopted in breaking up and neutralizing the toxins
of disease-germs. It is now known that poisons are formed in the process
of digesting and absorbing the simplest and most wholesome foods; and
the liver uses the skill which it has gained in dealing with these
"natural poisons" in disposing of the toxins of germs.

When a fever has run its course, as we now know nearly all infections
do, within periods ranging from three or four days to as many weeks, it
simply means that it has taken the liver and the other police-cells this
length of time to handle the rioters and turn