author's abstract of this paper issued by 

 the bibliographic service september 28. 



METABOLIC ACTIVITY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 



I. AMOUNT OF NON-PROTEIN NITROGEN IN THE CENTRAL NERVOUS 

 SYSTEM OF THE NORMAL ALBINO RAT 



S. HATAI 

 The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology 



ONE CHART 



The object of this paper is to present data on the relative 

 amount of various nitrogenous organic extractives normally 

 present in the central nervous system of the albino rat. There 

 has been much speculation from time to time by various writers 

 concerning the metabolic activity of this important organ, but 

 on account of either imperfect data or lack of the necessary 

 information, the results have been entirely unsatisfactory. 

 Recent advances in biochemical technique enable us now to 

 make precise quantitative determinations of various chemical 

 components in the nervous system, and it was the hope of the 

 present writer to obtain by methods of analysis data which would 

 assist in the study of the metabolic phenomena in this organ. 

 The data so far obtained are not very extensive, nevertheless 

 the results show several interesting relations which have not been 

 fully appreciated heretofore and I have decided therefore to 

 publish the present observations with some comments. 



MATERIAL 



For the present investigation albino rats were used. Since 

 this animal is small, it is disadvantageous when a large quantity 

 of material is required. However the extra labor needed to 

 obtain the desired quantity of material is well repaid, since by 

 thus taking a large number of rats one can reduce the effect of 

 individual variations to a minimum. Another reason for choos- 

 ing the rat was the fact that we now possess very complete 



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