DEAMIDIZING TISSUE FERMENTS 81 



of the blood and tissue-fluids autolytic processes can pro- 

 ceed 15 ). In a study carried out in the laboratory of Julius 

 Pohl 16 it has been shown that allantoin, which appears in 

 large amounts in autolysis of dog's liver 17 and for which 

 there is no reduction capacity on the part of the canine 

 economy, appears nevertheless in but very small amounts 

 among the normal excretory products. (Of course, if 

 autolysis were actually a complete duplicate of intravital 

 changes, we would necessarily expect that allantoin would 

 normally be excreted as a product; yet autolysis might 

 well be only one part of a vital process and it might well be 

 that in conditions where the other components, particularly 

 the vital oxidations, are absent it would not necessarily give 

 rise to exactly the same end-products as found in life.) To 

 the persistent question of exactly why, if autolysis actually 

 occurs- in the living body the living cells are not digested, 

 here again we have presented, one after the other, anti- 

 ferments, the immune bodies of the serum, the alkaline con- 

 ditions, etc., in short the whole arsenal of problematic 

 hypotheses with which, as the author has previously in- 

 sisted, we are in the vain habit of trying to conceal our 

 ignorance of the exact reason why the stomach, intestine and 

 pancreas are prevented from digesting themselves. 



Deamidizing Tissue Ferments. The atmosphere sur- 

 rounding this subject is rather unattractive and obscure, 

 making it a field to which the author is glad to devote no 

 more time than is actually necessary. Before proceeding to 

 better understood matters, however, he wishes at least briefly 

 to refer to the deamidizing ferments. As originally observed 

 by Martin Jacoby 18 in Hofmeister 's laboratory, in the course 



16 J. Baer and A. Loeb, Arch. f. exper. Pathol., 58, 1, 1905; A. v. Drjewecki, 

 Biochem. Zeitschr., 1, 229, 1906; Preti, Zeitschr. f. physiol. Chem., 52, 485, 

 1907. 



10 R. Poduschka (Pohl's Lab., Prague), Arch. f. exper. Path., 44, 59, 1900. 



"Borrissow (Baumann's Lab.), Zeitschr. f. physiol. Chem., 19, 499 (1904). 



*M. Jacoby (F. Hofmeister's Lab., Strassburg), Zeitschr. f. physiol. Chem., 

 SO, 149, 1900. 

 6 



