A RESPONSE TO SOME CRITICISMS OF THE COL- 



LOID-CHEMICAL THEORY OF WATER 



ABSORPTION BY PROTOPLASM 



MARTIN H. FISCHER 



(The Joseph Eichberg Laboratory of Physiology in the University of 



Cincinnati) 



Dr. William J. Gies has generously invited me to respond in the 

 pages of this Journal to various criticisms and questions he has 

 raised bearing on the general problem of water absorption by pro- 

 toplasm under various physiological and pathological conditions.^ 

 The follovving remarks are in response to this invitation. 



If I understand Gies's remarks correctly, he is perfectly agreed 

 to accept as true the Statement that the (hydrophilic) colloids of 

 the tissues and the State in which they exist determine in large 

 part the amount of water held by the tissues under various physio- 

 logical and pathological conditions. If this be true, then Gies and 

 I agree on the main contention of the various papers I have written 

 on this subject in the last six years.^ Whether he will accept my 

 belief that the colloids are of such predominant importance in the 

 whole question as to make it appear almost that they alone are 

 involved in the question cannot be gleaned from his remarks, but 

 his adherence to " cell membranes," " osmotic pressure," etc., would 

 indicate that he is less inclined than I to drop the teachings of 

 former decades. Which of these two views is the more nearly 

 correct cannot be determined now. Even though I have chosen 

 the more radical view, I am not ignorant of the fact that no radical 

 in science has ever succeeded in either knowing all the future or in 

 obliterating all the past. Only time can bring the necessary per- 

 spective to judge rightly between opposing views or shades of the 

 same view. 



* William J. Gies: Biochemical Bulletin, i, 124 and 279 (1911 and 1912) ; 

 F. G. Goodridge and William J. Gies : Proceedings of the Society for Experi- 

 mental Biology and Medicine, 8, 106 (1911). 



'See the bibliography at the end of this paper (page 458). 



444 



