CHEMISTRY OF THE CELL NUCLEUS 205 



Miescher devoted the rest of his life to the investigation 

 of nuclein and nucleic acid, and it is impossible to speak too 

 highly of the importance of this pioneer work. An enthusiastic 

 fisherman, he combined pleasure with business in the capture 

 of Rhine salmon during his holidays, and the roes of these 

 fishes served him as the material from which to prepare 

 nuclein. He it was, too, who discovered the simplest members 

 of the protein family, the protamines with which nucleic acid 

 is combined in the heads of the spermatozoa in the fish tribe. 



One sometimes hears, especially on the lips of those who 

 oppose the progress of science, a distinction drawn between 

 utilitarian and purely scientific experiments. But as Professor 

 Starling puts it in a recent pamphlet : 



" All researches are utilitarian, i.e. are for the benefit of 

 man. We are, however, accustomed to restrict this term to 

 those in which we can see the immediate benefit, and in which, 

 therefore, the advance can only be a small one of detail." 



He takes as his example the purely academic observations 

 of Galvani, Oersted, and Faraday, and shows how they have 

 rendered possible the whole of the electrical industries of 

 the present day. He might have taken the work of Miescher 

 as another instance. I do not suppose Miescher saw how his 

 work on salmon roe would illuminate our knowledge of 

 nutrition and malnutrition, and at least one example of the 

 immediate application of his work I propose to treat more 

 fully later in this paper, namely, the relationship of nuclear 

 metabolism to the elucidation of our knowledge of gout and 

 allied disorders. 



1 must pass over the work of many observers who con- 

 firmed and corrected details in the researches of Miescher, 

 and making a long jump pass to those who definitely set 

 themselves to the investigation of nucleic acid itself. In this 

 new epoch, Kossel's name must be specially mentioned, for 

 it is to his labours and those of his colleagues that we owe 

 the isolation and identification of its cleavage products. 



On breaking up nucleic acid it was found that, in addition 

 to a yield of phosphoric acid, many crystalline bases were 

 obtainable, so also was a carbohydrate. 



The bases were at one time termed nuclein bases, because 

 of their origin, at another xanthine bases, because xanthine 



