CARBOHYDRATE-SPLITTING FERMENTS 211 



olism. 60 Fundamentally, the fact that red blood cells con- 

 tain sugar is, in the writer's opinion, a self-evident one; 

 and he cannot suppress feelings of regret for the loss of 

 valuable time devoted by so many noted investigators to this 

 matter. We have absolutely no reason to doubt that sugar 

 may penetrate into every living cell in the system, to become, 

 as it were, the ready cash for defraying the expenses of the 

 vital combustion processes. Why should the red blood cells 

 especially be held different from the rest! 



Sugar in the Aqueous Humor. In conclusion a new 

 method, devised by E. H. Kahn, 61 should be mentioned for 

 rapid and simple reckoning of the proportion of blood 

 sugar in experiment animals. The anterior chamber of the 

 eye is punctured with a sharp hypodermic needle and the 

 fluid from the chamber caught in a tube. It is best to punc- 

 ture one eye before the experiment, and the other after the 

 conclusion of the experiment, and to determine the differ- 

 ence in the fluid from the separate eyes. If care be taken 

 not to wound the iris this interference is likely to cause no 

 more than a temporary disturbance of vision in the animal, 

 as the anterior chamber is very soon filled again. A hyper- 

 glycaemia, as that brought on by puncture in the fourth 

 ventricle (sugar puncture), or by adrenin, or phloridzin 

 becomes readily appreciable by an increased reducing power 

 of the fluid. 



CARBOHYDRATE-SPLITTING FERMENTS 

 Another large grou$ of phenomena, which next demand 

 our attention, is that due to the ferments which induce cleav- 

 age of carbohydrates, including the diastases, maltases, 

 invertases, lactases, etc. It must suffice to bring out here 

 only a few points of physical and pathological significance, 

 and for the rest, especially for all those questions which 



80 R. Hober (Kiel), Biochem. Zeitschr., 45, 207, 1912. 



61 R. H. Kahn (Prague), Centralbl. f. Physiol., 25, No. 3, 1911. 



