GASTRIC FERMENTS. 



By Dr. C. P. MENNiNGrm, Topeka. 



A S FAR back as the beginning of the sixteenth century the 

 -^^ phenomena of digestion claimed much attention from 

 students. There was no little diversity of opinion as to how 

 the food was digested. Some held that it was done by pure 

 mechanical action of the stomach, and others explained di- 

 gestion as due to a dissolving and transforming activity of 

 the juices of the stomach. 



Reaumur, who lived from 1683 to 1757, advocated that di- 

 gestion of food was due to the action of the juices of the 

 stomach. He demonstrated this by causing animals to swal- 

 low metallic perforated capsules filled with food. After these 

 had been cast out he examined the contents of the capsules 

 and found that certain substances had been dissolved out 

 while others had not thus been affected. Somewhat later, 

 Spallanzani devoted himself to the investigation of the juice 

 of the stomach and arrived at positive knowledge as to the 

 cause of food digestion in the stomach. He did this by caus- 

 ing birds to swallow small sponges which by means of a string 

 he withdrew, after some delay. In this way he obtained gas- 

 tric juice and made the first recorded artificial digestion in 

 vitro. 



For 100 years these conclusive scientific experiments were 

 buried under an avalanche of scientific (?) theories and rub- 

 bish, and not until the masterly works of Kirchoff, Eberle, 

 Schwann, Schonbein, Pasteur and Dubrunfaut, within the 

 memory of living man to-day, has science been injected into 

 the study of the ferments. 



Ferments were formerly classified into true ferments, this 

 term being applied to bacteria, molds, etc., which caused the 

 decomposition of an organic substance, and false ferments, 

 these being the soluble enzymes of the bacteria, molds, etc. 

 To-day we know, however, that living molds act because they 

 contain the ferment, and the true agent in every case of fer- 

 mentation is the soluble enzyme, and also that the enzyme will 

 act after the death of the parent cell. 



Ferments are also divided by some quite modern investi- 



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