CHAPTER II 



VELOCITY OF REACTIONS 



IN the following pages we will treat one of those 

 problems which have been open to discussion ever 

 since the beginnings of science. Our special 

 question is, if living matter obeys the same funda- 

 mental quantitative laws as those which govern 

 the reactions of inanimate matter. In other words, 

 we will look upon the problem of vitalism from a 

 chemical standpoint. We will limit this investiga- 

 tion to such laws as are expressed by formulae, 

 giving the relations between quantities dependent 

 the one on the other. It is chiefly with laws of 

 this kind that we are concerned in exact science. 



After the discovery of relationships in biological 

 chemistry, of which we do not know an analogy 

 in general chemistry, it was naturally maintained 

 that the general laws are different in these two ' 

 domains, and the physiologists have generally had 

 a tendency in this direction. But a still better 

 method of working is to seek for an analogy in 

 general chemistry. If this has been found, it is 

 in most cases much easier to explain, and after 



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