vi TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 



result of well-considered culling of facts and their align- 

 ment in probable sequence. A satisfying series of page- 

 references serves to direct the reader to the literature in 

 which are recorded the minutiae of details which such a work 

 cannot reasonably be expected to embody. 



In the three years since the appearance of the original 

 edition there have, it is true, appeared in current literature 

 facts which the author would doubtless have noted had the 

 times been more fortunate ; but the translator has felt that 

 the book is so peculiarly one man's own that to annotate 

 would be meddlesome and intolerable. The possible changes 

 in statement at any rate would have been no more than minor, 

 and the additions, mainly in connection with the sections 

 dealing with proteins and diabetes, would surely not 

 materially modify the general picture which the author has 

 drawn. 



In the original Gennan edition Professor von Fiirth's 

 "Probleme der Physiologischen und Pathologischen 

 Chemie" appeared in two separately complete volumes; a 

 translation of the second of which, dealing with the chem- 

 istry of normal and pathological metabolism, appears in the 

 following pages. The first volume of the series deals with 

 and is entitled " Chemistry of Tissues "; reference to which 

 from place to place appears in the following text. The trans- 

 lator can only regret that the conditions of publication have 

 permitted of the presentation of no more than a single one 

 of these ; but it should be clearly understood that the com- 

 pleteness of the present volume is in no sense involved by 

 the fact that its companion volume remains untranslated. 



The translator has endeavored to preserve the spirit of 

 the book, but has not attempted to maintain an absolutely 

 literal translation. Doubtless defects of form and perhaps, 

 unfortunately, of sense as well, may be detected in the trans- 

 lation ; if so no one will regret them more than the translator. 

 But these aside, he can and does frankly commend the book 

 as an orderly and masterful delineation of the important 



