474 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [48] 
the disintegration of living and dead albumen, but only supposes that 
there is an increased mortification of elements of tissue. How much 
easier can these and other phenomena be explained, as soon as we know . 
for certain that it is not a question of life or death, but only one of dis- 
turbance of the equilibrium of normal conditions of life; and as soon as 
we take into consideration the circumstance that even organs like the 
obliquely-striped fibers of the muscle, without losing their excitability, 
and without—so to speak—making much stir, throw enormous quanti- 
ties of albumen into the juices delivering them to disintegrating pro- 
cesses, under conditions which can at any time be fulfilled through the 
system of the vascular nerves? Is it certain that the few milligrams of 
phosphorus really produce the well-known and extensive fatty degener- 
tion by exercising a direct influence on every fiber and cell of a mass of 
muscles and glands weighing many kilograms? May not this influence 
be exercised by means of the system of vascular nerves, and by a radi- 
cal disturbance of the circulation? And, finally, we should seriously 
inquire if this same anomaly in the distribution of the blood—caused by 
a feverish process and in a nervous way affecting the retention of heat 
in the body—does not also produce the state of liquidation of the mus- 
cles, the consequent intensified disintegration of the albumen, the di- 
minished desire for food, and the consumption, which no feeding can 
check. 
These hints will sufficiently explain why I have made the conditions 
of life of the Rhine salmon the subject of exhaustive investigations. We 
are here confronted with the strongest and most effectual tendency to 
starvation known to physiology; owing to the supremacy exercised by 
the mass of one organ over all the rest, we are favored with a clear view 
of the internal economy of the substances of the animal body, such as 
we shall rarely find in any of the other animals which are generally made 
the subjects of such experiments. To find such objects as will aid in 
solving the different dark problems of life is, in my opinion, the proper 
aim of comparative biology. 
