86 ORGANIC FUNCTIONING 



different. And the differences between proteins follow, to some 

 degree, the natural classification of animals : Thus the blood 

 proteins of man are more like those of the anthropoid apes than 

 they are like the proteins, say, of sheep and goats. 



Thus although the food substances of (say) a man may be 

 mammalian proteins and fats and vegetable carbohydrates, these 

 proteins, fats and carbohydrates are not the same as the human 

 proteins, fats and carbohydrates. 



Nevertheless, all proteins can be chemically broken down into 

 amino-acids (of which there are few compared with the proteins) ; 

 all fats can be similarly broken down into fatty acids and glycerol ; 

 all carbohydrates can be hydrolyzed and otherwise changed so 

 as to form a relatively small group of sugars. These disintegra- 

 tions occur during the processes of digestion. 



And since the human body (analysed as above) is not a complex 

 of amino-acids, fatty acids, glycerol and sugars it follows that, 

 after the digestion of the raw food substances, and their resolution 

 into the amino and fatty acids, the glycerol and sugars, these 

 latter substances must again be re-synthesized into the human 

 proteins, fats and carbohydrates. This is assimilation. 



2ia. Chemical Assimilation. The assimilation is, in the 

 first place, a chemical one — the proteins ingested, as the foods, 

 are made similar to the proteins of the animals that eat those 

 foods. The process was believed to be one effected by the same 

 enzymes that effected the digestive changes. Thus the action 

 of a catalyst is often reversible : for instance, amyl nitrite can be 

 hydrolyzed by boiling with alcoholic potash, but at the same time 

 the potassium nitrite will tend to be dissociated into potassium 

 hydrate and into nitrous acid, which again forms an ester (amyl 

 nitrite) with the amyl alcohol which was formed in the first phase 

 of the reaction. So it was believed that the same lipase that split 

 up the neutral fat in the intestine also recombined the fatty acid 

 and glycerol into neutral fat in the intestinal mucosa, or in the 

 lacteal vessels. This is not exactly the case, however, since the 

 neutral fats that go into the blood-stream are not the same as 

 those that were in the foods. 



Therefore the enzymes cannot be strictly reversible ones. 



The details of the chemical assimilations are not known. How- 

 ever the amino acids that pass into the blood-stream after digestion 

 are again synthesized into proteins — in the liver and tissues to 



