I9I2] Martin H. Fischer 451 



bicarbonates ? Do the interstitial dissolved colloids have any influence 

 in restraining the development of edema at any stage of the process? 

 (Page 307.) 



Dissolved colloids behave exactly as do solid ones. Wolfgang 

 Pauli and his co-workers Hans Handovsky, Karl Schorr and 

 Richard Wagner worked this out to perfection so that it would 

 have been superfluous for me to do it also. What I think of the 

 various "membranes" that were born with Pfeffer's osmotic con- 

 ceptions and which change their nature with every author and every 

 newly gained experimental fact is evident in all my writings. 



Goodridge and I find, when meist shreds of fibrin are severally 

 suspended in gelatin Solution, peptone Solution, fresh egg white, blood, 

 milk, and meat juice, that hydrochloric acid Solution (0.2 per cent. to 

 10 per cent.) may be added to the mixture in each case in any Pro- 

 portion without inducing visible efifects on the fibrin shreds, unless 

 sufficient acid is added to provide an excess in the free State. Very 

 large quantities of acid may be added to such mixtures without induc- 

 ing appreciable bloating effect.^ If the colloids in the artificial Solu- 

 tions and protoplasmic liquids enumerated above are combined with 

 any proportion of the acid up to exactly their maximum affinity for it 

 (hydrochloric acid), so that the liquids while strongly acid to litmus 

 respond negatively to tests for free acid, then moist fibrin shreds can re- 

 main in such fluids indefinitely without swelling to any perceptible degree. 

 Warm concentrated gelatin Solutions may be put into these conditions 

 of free and combined acidity. After such Solutions have been per- 

 mitted to gelatinize, moist fibrin shreds which have been imbedded in 

 the resultant jellies swell perceptibly, provided the gelatinized mass 

 contains free acid, hut the shreds do not appear to absorb ivater from 

 the medium if its contained acid is only in combined form. It is 

 obvious that such facts have an important bearing on any theory of 

 acid causation of edema. 



A few days ago^ I extended these observations to enucleated eyes 



' Goodridge and Gies : Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology 

 and Medicine, 191 1, viii, p. 107. 



* " A few days " before the meeting of the Biochemical Association at which 

 this subject was discussed. The resuUs of subsequent experiments will be re- 

 ported elsewhere. The writer (Gies) has lately commented in a very general way 

 on some of these additional results in a preliminary report in the Proceedings of 

 the Biological Section of the American Chemical Society (Biochemical Bul- 

 letin, 1911, i, p. 124). The following remark is included in that report: "Ex- 



