VOL. 4 (1950) A CHALLENGE TO BIOCHEMISTS II 



One final word — to continue my challenge to biochemists. Otto Meyerhof's first 

 letter to me, as I wrote at the beginning, came from Naples: all his life he has been 

 ready to vary not only his chemical technique but his biological material. The proper- 

 ties of animals, and of their muscular systems, vary over a very wide range. There is 

 no need to stick to rabbits and frogs. If a problem seems insoluble on one muscle, one 

 should try to define it more precisely to see where the difficulty lies. Discussion with a 

 zoologist, or a visit to a Marine Laboratory, may provide material many times better 

 suited to one's needs. I spent many years trying to measure the heat production of nerve : 

 if I had made the experiment on crabs' nerves instead of frogs' the answer would have 

 come in 1912 instead of 1926. In 1912 it was not possible to define the problem well 

 enough to get a clear direction to non-medullated nerve, but at least one might have 

 taken a chance and not persisted with the frog's sciatic. If one's instruments, or methods, 

 are too slow, one can make them relatively quicker by using slower material — tortoises, 

 toads or even sloths. That means, of course, that biochemists, Hke biophysicists, must 

 also be biologists (as Meyerhof has always been and as Hopkins was) — but why not? 



REFERENCES 



1 E. Baldwin, Dynamic Aspects of Biochemistry. Cambridge University Press (i947)- 



2 A. Sandow, A7in. N. Y. Acad. Sci., 47 (1947) 895- 

 ^ HiSTORicus, Foreign Affairs, 27 (i949) I75- 



* A. V. Hill, Phvsiol. Revs, 12 (1932) 56. . . xr ■ ■ ti_ / Q^ 



5 A. D. Ritchie, The Comparative Physiology of Muscular Tissue, Cambridge Umversity Press (I92«). 



6 D. K. Hill, /. Physiol., 107 (1948) 4° ?• 



' A. V. Hill and P. Kupalov, Proc. Roy. Soc. B., 106 (1930) 445- 



8 A. V. Hill and J. L. Parkinson, Proc. Roy. Soc. B., 108 (1931) 148- 



9 A. V. Hill, Proc. Roy. Soc. B., 127 (i939) 434- 

 10 B. Katz, /. Physiol., 96 (i939) 45- 



" A. V. Hill, Proc. Roy. Soc. B., 126 (1938) 136- 



12 A. Levin and J. Wyman, Proc. Roy. Soc. B., loi (1927) 218. 



Received March 7th, 1949 



