CURRENT LITERATURE 
BOOK REVIEWS 
Oxidations and reductions 
Daxin’s monograph" on oxidations and reductions in the animal body is 
of interest to the plant as well as animal physiologist. Chap. i includes an 
introduction and discussion of the nature of oxidizing and reducing agents in 
the body as well as the methods of investigation. Chap. ii deals with the 
oxidation of saturated fatty acids, unsaturated acids, fatty acids with branched 
chains, and dibasic acids. Chap. iii discusses the oxidations of a amino, 
a hydroxy, and a ketonic acids, the oxidation of phenylalanine, tyrosin, 
tophane, and related substances, and the oxidation and reduction of amino 
acids by microorganisms. Chap. iv treats of the oxidation of carbohy 
chap. v of the oxidation of purin derivatives; and chap. vi of the ser ni ‘el 
hydrocarbons, phenols, aldehydes, amines, and indol derivatives. The volume 
also includes a bibliography of 21 pages and a full index. 
A quotation-from the preface gives the point of view of the work: “The 
Statement that fats and sugars are oxidized in the body to carbon dioxide and 
water, while proteins yield urea in addition, are no longer considered all- 
sufficient explanations of the chemical réle of these in animal economy. The 
study of chemical structure is rapidly changing the whole aspect of biological 
science, and we may confidently look forward to the time when the orderly 
succession of chemical reactions constituting the activities of the living cell 
be resolved into their individual phases.” The author does not enter into 
“the purely biological aspects of the subject, and also the thermodynamics 
of the problem of oxidations and reductions have been necessarily omitted as 
outside the scope of the work. References to many enzymes, oxygenases, 
peroxidases, etc., which, so far as is known, are without action upon the prin- 
cipal groups of sebatalees which furnish energy to the organism, have also 
been omitted.”’ 
In discussing the nature of the oxidizing and reducing agents of the animal 
body, he treats as improbable the ScHONBERN theory of “activation of oxygen 
in its polymerization,” the CLaustus and VANn’t Horr view of the separation 
of the oxygen into its atoms or ions, and the Hoppe-SEYLER conception of the 
resolution of the oxygen by nascent hydrogen or other reducing agents. He 
accepts as very probable the Moritz TRAUBE peroxide theory of oxidation, 

*Daxty, H. D., Oxidations and reductions in the animal body. PP: viii +135- 
New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 1912. One of the monographs on biochemistry. 
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