A THEORY OF THE MECHANISM OF DISINFECTION, 

 HEMOLYSIS, AND SIMILAR PROCESSES. 



By S. C. brooks. 



{From the Harvard School of Tropical Medicine, Boston) 



(Received for publication, July 25, 1918.) 



The apparent course of such processes as hemolysis is determined 

 by the rate of change in the number of hving cells which have under- 

 gone some definite alteration, such as laking or loss of viability. A 

 great deal of confusion has arisen from the attempts of various in- 

 vestigators to deduce from the observed course of disinfection and 

 hemolysis the nature of their fundamental reactions. Processes of 

 this kind have often been looked upon as due to reactions of a mono- 

 molecular type, solely because of a superficial resemblance between 

 the curves expressing the rate of progress of the two phenomena. 



This paper is a critical discussion of the part played by the physico- 

 chemical process or group of processes leading to death, laking, and 

 similar effects in determining progressive changes in the number of 

 individual cells succumbing in successive units of time to the action 

 of the deleterious agent. These physicochemical processes in the 

 protoplasm may, for the sake of brevity, be termed the ''fundamental 

 reaction;" by the "course of the process" we shall understand the 

 time curve of any process like hemolysis or disinfection. The subject 

 is treated in four sections dealing with (1) the evidence that the degree 

 of hemolysis is determined by the number of cells which are laked, 

 and that this depends on the fact that individual cells possess different 

 degrees of resistance; (2) the influence taken singly and in combina- 

 tion, of changes in the variation curve of resistance and of progressive 

 changes in the velocity of the fundamental reaction ; (3) the hypotheses 

 advanced to account for the observed course of disinfection, hemolysis, 

 and like processes; (4) the interpretation and significance of the time 

 curves of such processes. 



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