LIFE AND WORK OF FELIX HOPPE-SEYLER. 551 



cellulose into carbonic anhydride and marsli gas, wliich, as he showed, 

 was due to a bacterium resembling or identical with the Bacillus 

 amyldbacter. 



As might be expected, Hoppe-Seyler devoted considerable time 

 to chlorophyll. He discovered and named the " chlorophyllan," a 

 crystalline derivative of chlorophyll. He devised an ingenious 

 method for showing that chlorophyll, in the sunlight, liberated 

 oxygen in a molecular and not an atomic state. If a green plant be 

 brought into a glass tube in water, a little putrefying blood added, 

 and the tube hermetically sealed and placed in the dark, all oxygen is 

 consumed and the tube shows the spectrum of haemoglobin. If the 

 plant be brought into the direct sunlight, the haemoglobin is trans- 

 formed by the oxygen liberated by the chlorophyll bodies into 

 oxyhaemoglobin, which gives a characteristic spectrum. If the oxy- 

 gen were liberated in an atomic state, the spectrum of methaemo- 

 globin would appear. 



Let us now glance briefly at Hoppe-Seyler's influence upon 

 physiological chemistry. He may be called the father of this sci- 

 ence, for, although the beginnings of biochemistry were identical 

 with those of organic chemistry, both taking their origin in La- 

 voisier's experiments on oxidation, Regnault and Renard's on respira- 

 tion, Chevreul's on the fats, and Liebig's and "Wohler's on urea, 

 muscle, and animal metabolism, yet in the early half of the century 

 the interest of the purely chemical analysis and synthesis of organic 

 bodies had almost completely absorbed the attention of chemists. It 

 was Hoppe-Seyler's great merit to perceive and to emphasize, with all 

 his might, the great importance of physiological chemistry in the 

 arts, in industries, and in medicine. His clear glance perceived that a 

 knowledge of the chemical constitution and chemical processes of 

 organisms in health and disease must underlie any proper treatment 

 or understanding of disease, a fact which in the world at large to-day 

 is becoming better and better recognized. 



To further the development of this science, whose importance 

 he perceived, he saw that it must have an undivided attention; that 

 it must be divorced from physiology and pathology on the one hand, 

 and from chemistry on the other, and given an independent position 

 in the university faculty. In this contention Hoppe-Seyler met with 

 fierce opposition in Germany, particularly from Pfliiger and other 

 physiologists and chemists, so that to-day there is but one pro- 

 fessorship of physiological chemistry in Germany — namely, that 

 at Strasburg. In other countries Hoppe-Seyler's idea received 

 more favorable attention, and he lived to see such professorships 

 established in Sweden, ISTorway, Switzerland, Austria, Russia, and 

 America. 



