=Origin of the Toxins.=--These toxic bodies result either as the products of the secretion of microbial life, or as the result of the normal functionation of cellular life in the higher vegetable or animal organisms. They are the direct products of life, and do not result, as was formerly believed, from a more or less profound modification of the more or less complex albuminoids that serve as a food for the various species of microbes, or for the cellular elements. The vegetable toxins are less numerous than the animal toxins. They are met with, nevertheless, in almost all mushrooms which are reputed or known to be toxic; the seed of the castor plant contains a very toxic vegetable albuminoid, as is likewise the case with Abrus precatorius (jequirity-bean), and certain others. The true physiological toxins occupy a very important place in the realization of the conditions that govern health, sickness, and death. We will see later on that they are met with in quite large number in the bladder, whence they are voided in the urine. Their number varies considerably, according to diverse influences (waking, slumber, eating, fasting, fatigue, oxygen, brainwork, health, disease, etc.). It is necessary here to observe that the renal system serves for the purification of the entire organism, and that in the case of normal life we will find in the renal system a large portion of the products of the cellular secretion of the organism, and among the number there are found, as we know, a certain number of alkaloidal bases. We will take up later the subject of urinary toxicity. =Autointoxications.=--The toxins are also encountered, and often in some number, in the muscular tissues and in the blood, particularly in those of batrachians, mureids, and saurians. In the organism these toxins, developed by the activity of the various cells, may cause autointoxication whenever, for one cause or another, their normal elimination ceases. "Although there are an infinity of diseases," remarked Prof. Bouchard, "there are but a few ways of becoming ill." Of these ways that of autointoxication is the most frequent. "What else is it, then," says Prof. Charrin, "in the last analysis, but to die from affections of the kidney, the liver, the heart, the lung, etc., if it be not to succumb because of the lack of oxygen, the accumulation of carbonic acid, the influence of the numerous urinary poisons, the action of acids, of salts, of biliary pigments, or the effect of noxious principles, which the hepatic cell must normally destroy or at least attenuate." These autointoxications, always due to poor elimination of toxic principles, toxins formed in very great number in the organism, and which the normal modes of evacuation or destruction do not eliminate, are always found to be the cause of all diseases, even those that are manifested by attacks of the cerebro-spinal axis, and that exhibit variously mania, insanity, symptoms of hyperexcitability, etc.