Chittenden and Hart — Elastin and the Elastose Bodies. 21 



elastose, which by further action passes into peptone. The elastose 

 is described as a body completely soluble in water, not jjrecipitable 

 by mineral or acetic acids, but its solution is rendered turbid by heat. 

 In its other reactions it resembles albumin. In composition, how- 

 ever, it differs decidedly from elastin and equally from our protoelas- 

 tose. Morochowetz ascribes to it 55 '9 per cent, carbon, 7*29 per cent, 

 hydrogen, 16*68 per cent, nitrogen and 0*617 per cent, sulphur. As 

 to the method employed in its preparation and purification we do 

 not know, but as described it evidently is not akin to pure elastose. 



Deiiferoelastose. 



In the salt-saturated filtrate from the first sodium chloride precipi- 

 tate of protoelastose, there was present a substance precipitable as a 

 gummy mass, by the addition of a little 30 per cent, acetic acid sat- 

 urated with salt. Past experience with other proteoses has shown 

 that, as a rule, all of the proto body is not precipitated by saturation 

 of its neutral solution with salt, but that there usually remains a certain 

 amount which on addition of salt-saturated acetic acid is precipitated, 

 together with more or less of the deutero body, and that from this 

 filtrate pure deutero can be separated by saturation with ammonium 

 sulphate. In the present instance, however, it appeared that the 

 acetic acid precipitate was of quite a different nature from the sodium 

 chloride precipitate and that if it was not pure deuteroelastose, it at 

 least contained only a ti-ace of the proto body. Further, saturation 

 of the acetic acid filtrate with ammonium sulphate gave only a slight 

 precipitate, even when the mixture was heated, showing that if the 

 salt-saturated acetic acid had not precipitated the deuteroelastose, 

 little could have been formed. 



The gummy precipitate separated by acetic acid and salt was 

 purified somewhat by solution in water, and reprecipitation by satura- 

 tion with salt and addition of a little salt-saturated acetic acid. It 

 was then dissolved in water, made exactly neutral to test papers, and 

 dialyzed until all chlorine was removed from the solution. The 

 filtered fluid was then evaporated to dryness on a water-bath, and the 

 powdered residue dried at 110" C. until of constant weight. 



The composition of the substance is shown in the accompanying 

 table, from which it is seen that the deutero body contains a notice- 

 ably smaller percentage of carbon than protoelastose, and a corres- 

 pondingly higher content of oxygen. The difference between the 

 sodium chloride precipitate and the acetic acid precipitate, however, 

 becomes far more marked when the reactions of the two bodies are 



