2o8 PROTOPLASMIC ACTION AND NERVOUS ACTION 



water containing a suitable anaesthetic (ether, chloretone, 

 alcohol) in the narcotizing concentration, and are then 

 transferred to NaCl solution (preferably containing 

 anaesthetic), show no such effect; there is no immediate 

 loss of pigment and Httle or no stimulation. The 

 breakdown of cilia in the NaCl solution is also prevented.' 

 A protective (antitoxic) or stabilizing action is associated 

 with the narcotizing action in this organism; and 

 essentially similar conditions have been found in the 

 eggs of the sea-urchin Arhacia.^ Analogous observations 

 have been made on other cells by a number of investiga- 

 tors. Arrhenius and Bubanovic found that the break- 

 down of blood corpuscles in hypotonic media was 

 hindered by anaesthetics;^ similar observations have more 

 recently been made by Linzenmeier and Runnstrom; 

 haemolysis and agglutination by foreign proteins may 

 also be diminished by anaesthetics."* These '^ stabiliza- 

 tion" effects are observed in the concentrations corre- 

 sponding to the anaesthetizing range; higher concentra- 



^R. S. Lillie, American Journal of Physiology, XXIX (1912), 372; 

 XXXI (1913), 255. 



2 R. S. Lillie, American Journal of Physiology, XXX (1912), i. 



3 Publications of Nobel Institute (1913), No. 32, cited from Hober's 

 Physikalische Chemie der Zelle u. der Geivebe, p. 466. 



4 See Linzenmeier, Arch. ges. Physiol., CLXXXI (1920), 169, and 

 CLXXXVI (1921), 272; for similar observations on bacteria cf. Vor- 

 schiitz, ibid., CLXXXVI (1921), 290; Runnstrom, Biochem. Zeitschrift, 

 CXXIII (192 1), I. See also the observations of Traube {Biochem. 

 Zeitschrift, X [1908J, 371) and Clowes {Proceedings of the Society of Experi- 

 mental Biology and Medicine, XI [1913], 8). These changes of properties 

 resulting from the modification of surface-films have an interesting 

 relation to those produced by addition of proteins to suspensions of 

 bacteria and blood corpuscles, and recently investigated by Northrop 

 and de Kruif {Jour. Gen. Physiol., IV [1922], 655), Eggerth and Bellows 

 {ibid., p. 669), and Coulter {ibid., p. 403). 



