GLYCOLYTIC TISSUE FERMENTS 335 



probable. While we are coming to recognize from a grow- 

 ing and more and more convincing experience that even with 

 the presence of toluol it is not at all easy to protect a tissue 

 pulp or especially suspensions of such a material from 

 bacterial invasion with certainty, we have no reason, as far 

 as the writer is aware, to doubt the efficiency of toluol in a 

 fluid medium. Hall, in addition, controlled the sterility of his 

 tests by both aerobic and anaerobic culture methods. More- 

 over the fact that the glycolytic power of pancreatic and 

 muscle extracts failed to manifest itself upon solutions of 

 fructose and lactose, and appeared only in connection with 

 glucose, specifically contradicts any bacterial influence, bac- 

 teria being in no wise selective enough to make such a 

 difference. 19 



Recently P. A. Levene, who has at his -disposal the great 

 technical facilities of the Rockefeller Institute, of New 

 York, has investigated the glycolytic influence of various 

 animal tissues with and without addition of "activators." 

 The tissues as such proved in practically all cases inactive. 

 Addition of pancreatic extract to muscle was without effect 

 in case of canine tissues, in rabbit tissues resulted in show- 

 ing a lowered reducing power of the sugar solutions (but, 

 in the dog, for example, splenic extract in combination with 

 other tissues seemed to be feebly active). Levene 's experi- 

 ments have shown, however, that we are not justified in 

 regarding a loss in reducing power of the glucose solutions 

 employed as due only to "glycolysis." It seems that con- 

 densation processes, converting simple sugar to higher 

 molecular products, may be involved. The reducing power 

 of a sugar solution which has been lowered by the combined 



19 Stoklasa, Zeitschr. f. physiol. Chem., 62, 35, 1909, found precisely the 

 opposite, viz., that preparations made from pancreas juice by alcoholic ether 

 would break up disaccharides in the absence of antiseptics, with formation of 

 lactic acid, alcohol and carbonic acid. However, hexoses apparently ferment 

 only when produced by fermentation hydrolysis. All these effects are decidedly 

 interfered with by the presence of antiseptics. Here, too, may be applied the 

 remark that bacteria do not tend to be very selective which if correct to one 

 is fair to the other side. 



