82 SOAPS AND PROTEINS 



tion to the former type of system must be carried out with the 

 greatest caution, if, indeed, they may be used at all. Yet it is 

 the common practice of biochemists and biological workers to 

 hold that protoplasm, too, is something analogous to a dilute 

 solution. 



The observations detailed above carry with/ them an inter- 

 esting corollary. The color changes of indicators are in the major- 

 ity of instances assumed to be dependent upon a play between the 

 concentration of the electrically charged hydrogen and hydroxyl 

 ions. If this assumption is held true for phenolphthalein (or for 

 any other indicator which is held to act in this fashion), and 

 especially if any one maintains that such indicator methods may 

 be applied to concentrated lyophilic colloid systems, then the 

 conclusion is inevitable that these concentrated systems contain no 

 such ions. The matter is of significance because living matter 

 (normal protoplasm) does not behave, as is so widely assumed, as 

 water containing a little colloid, but rather as a colloid contain- 

 ing some water. 1 If this be true and all experimental evidence 

 supports such a conclusion then the material which we call living 

 matter is probably under normal circumstances as electrically bland 

 as is a concentrated soap solution, a conclusion not to be overlooked 

 in a day when the explanation of almost every fundamental life 

 process has been assumed to have been found in an electrical 

 notion of some kind. This criticism is not to be misunderstood. 

 Differences in electrical potential, in ionization, etc., do come 

 about in living matter, but they are more probably the results of 

 and the expression of injury to the involved structures than 

 of their normal life. 



1 MARTIN H. FISCHER: (Edema and Nephritis, 3rd Ed., New York (1921) 

 where references to the first publications on this subject may be found. 



