Annals 
of the 
Missouri Botanical Garden 
Vor. 5 NOVEMBER, 1918 No. 4 
ETHERIZATION OF TISSUES AND ITS EFFECT ON 
ENZYME ACTIVITY 
WALTER W. BONNS 
Formerly Rufus J. Lackland Fellow in the Henry Shaw School of месі of 
Washington University 
In the years following the discovery of anaesthesia by 
ether and other substances a great amount of work has been 
devoted to the study of the stimulating and inhibiting ef- 
fects of various factors on plants and animals; the litera- 
ture on the subject is voluminous. A knowledge of the range 
of chemieal compounds capable of producing a form of either 
stimulation or anaesthesia (and we shall see that these con- 
trasting phenomena are closely allied with respect to the 
causal agent) has vastly increased, and embraces many sub- 
stances, both organic and inorganic, which do not ordinarily 
come to mind as anaesthetics. No attempt will here be made 
to review, except incidentally, the work in the domain of 
animal physiology bearing on the anaesthesia question; 
neither is it germane to the present study to consider more 
fully the literature relating to stimulation and inhibition 
caused by other agents than those commonly regarded as 
anaesthetics, i. e., ether, chloroform, and chemically related 
substances. 
Survey or LITERATURE 
EFFECT ON IRRITABILITY 
Effect on growth and turgor movements of complex mem- 
bers.—Probably the first experiments with ether in the field 
of plant physiology are those of Clemens (747, ”48, '48*) 
and of Marcet.1 The former found that Mimosa pudica and 
1 Cited by Hempel (71) and by Rothert (703). 
ANN. Mo. Bor. GARD., VOL. 5, 1918 (225) 
