240 THE ACTION OF THE LIVING CELL 



tempted to postulate that it is inorganic in nature, 

 since it resists the temperatures incident to ashing. 

 Our experiments have shown this to be unlikely, how- 

 ever, for, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, the 

 ash may be inactivated if heated to too high a tem- 

 perature during the ashing procedure. While very 

 high temperatures might lead to the slow volatiliza- 

 tion of some inorganic compounds, it is highly im- 

 probable that this would be great enough to cause 

 the complete loss of an inorganic compound which 

 determined the toxicity of the ash. Furthermore, in- 

 jection of various salts of the metallic elements com- 

 monly found in tissue ash does not elicit shock in ani- 

 mals; hence it seems that such substances cannot be 

 responsible for the effects observed in the experiments 

 we have discussed above. 



Since the ordinary methods of chemical analysis 

 might fail to detect the presence of minute quantities 

 of various elements present in the ash, we have sub- 

 jected various samples of the active ash to spectro- 

 graphic examination. This was carried out with a 

 Hilger quartz spectrograph and by the arc method. 

 For the most part high purity copper was used as 

 electrodes, although in some instances aluminum and 

 carbon were substituted. Typical spectrograms of the 

 ash obtained in this manner are shown in the accom- 

 panying spectrographs, wherein the lines corre- 

 sponding to particular elements have been marked 

 with their respective symbols. 



Ash obtained from the tissues of the cow, cat, hen, 

 fox, guinea pig, horse, lion, rabbit, rat, dog, and human 

 were examined. Examination of the spectrograms 

 discloses the presence of sodium, potassium, calcium, 



