258 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. II. 



and so definite their reaction, one may make permanently mounted pre- 

 parations of sections of animal and vegetable tissues, in which the distribu- 

 tion of the chromatin is shown by the iron reaction. The latter may 

 thus be quite readily employed instead of the staining methods with haema- 

 toxylin and other dyes which, when carefully used, are supposed to select 

 only chromatin. The results which I have obtained with the new 

 methods are so numerous and so important that I must reserve an ex- 

 tended description of them for another paper. Suffice it at present to say 

 that the fundamental life substance is a?i iron compound and that, inferen- 

 t tally, the chemical processes underlying life, in other zvords life itself, are 

 to be referred to the co7istant oxidation and reduction of the iron of this 

 compound. This iron-holding compound being present in every living 

 cell, the mystery of the appearance, here and there in animal and veget- 

 able forms, of hasmatin* either free, or attached to a proteid as haemo- 

 globin, is explained. 



It is to be noted further that the iron, though not held in chromatin 

 as firmly as it is in hsematin, is yet as tenaciously held therein as it is in 

 the ferrocyanides, which also yield, under the same conditions, their 

 iron to ammonium sulphide. 



The methods referred to show further that the stainable substance 

 which diffuses from the nuclei and mitotic figures in hzematoblasts, is an 

 iron compound in which the iron is less firmly held than in hsemoglobin, 

 and that it persists for comparatively a long time as such, before 

 becoming converted into the latter substance. There are also facts which 

 seem to indicate that ha:imGglobin is a degeneration product and not a 

 substance formed in the synthetical processes of the haematoblasts. 



The bearing of these conclusions on the currently accepted views 

 as to the pathology of anaemia is obvious. Since hsemoglobin is a 

 derivative product of chromatin, and since the latter is an iron compound 

 all important in cellular life, anaemia cannot be, primarily, a deficiency in 

 the formation of haemoglobin, but, first of all, a deficiency in chromatin^ 

 not only of haematoblasts, but of every cell in the body. In other words 

 the primary cause of all anaemias, other than haemolytic, is hypochromatosis 

 and the condition wh'ch Virchow called hypoplasia is as much a result of 

 this hypochromatosis, as is the deficiency in formation of haemoglobin. 



Other points arising out of these investigations may be mentioned : the 

 differences between animal and vegetable chromatin and between the 

 chromatin of highly specialized animal cells on the one hand and that of 

 lower forms of animal life, on the other, the occurrence of haemoglobin 



*Linossier and Phipson describe (Comptes Rendus Vol. CXII, pp. 490 and 666) the 

 occurrence of hasmatin-like compounds in Aspergilhis ttiger 3Xid Palmella cruenta. 



