Weigert's Biological Law

Weigert's Biological Law, otherwise known as the law of hypercompensation. Its essence is that in response to the expenditure of substances or loss of tissues (within certain limits), the body reacts by producing new such substances and tissues in quantities exceeding the need to compensate for the deficit. Thus, on wound surfaces, there develops in a number of cases the so-called 'wild meat'—a growth of young granulation tissue, and when filling bone defects—the so-called 'callus'. By virtue of the same law, with increased work of an organ, there develops, provided its adequate nutrition, working hypertrophy, since the loss of substances associated with work, the body responds with enhanced assimilation of the same substances, with the latter prevailing over dissimilation. Weigert's biological law was especially widely used by Ehrlich in his theory of side chains, proposed to explain the mechanism of antibody formation in the body in response to the introduction of an antigen.