344 A - p - MAT HEWS. 







The cause of the formation of living matter is to be sought in 

 the foods and not in the living matter. 



.As this conclusion has not so far as I know been hitherto per- 

 ceived, the reasons for it may be briefly presented. They are in 

 brief two : The examination of protoplasm has shown that it 

 contains a great number of catalyzing agents or ferments. So 

 many of these have been found in all cells and so clearly do 

 protoplasmic reactions partake of this nature that the opinion is 

 widely accepted that the chemical transformation of the foods in 

 protoplasm into the substances constituting protoplasm is brought 

 about by ferments. The work which has been done by the phys- 

 ical chemists and others upon ferments shows in the clearest 

 manner that ferments are substances which do not cause reac- 

 tions, they only accelerate reactions which will go on anyway in 

 their absence, but which go on very slowly. Ferments there- 

 fore are accelerators of spontaneous reactions. Zymase does 

 not cause the decomposition of the sugar molecule, it only accel- 

 erates its decomposition. The necessary result of this funda- 

 mental conception of the nature of ferment actions is this : the 

 nature of the chemical transformations which the foods undergo 

 in protoplasm is not altered or determined by the protoplasm. 

 The nature of the transformation is determined by the foods ; 

 protoplasm by means of the ferments it contains only influences 

 the rate of the transformation. This means as already pointed 

 out that the foods must spontaneously transform themselves into 

 the mixture called protoplasm, if given time enough. In proto- 

 plasm this transformation goes on very rapidly because some of 

 the products of the reaction act as catalyzers to hasten the rate 

 of this or that phase of the reaction. 



In the second place a careful study of the transformations of 

 the foods within and outside of protoplasm has failed to show a 

 single instance in which the character of the transformation is 

 different in two cases. This result is now so well understood in 

 physiological chemistry that if we wish to discover what sub- 

 stances are formed out of any food or other substance during 

 its passage through protoplasm, we subject the substance to de- 

 compositions, hydrolytic, oxidative, or reducing, outside the body, 

 determine the substances formed and then look for these substances 

 in the organism knowing that they will be formed there also. 



