FAT PHANEROSIS IN AUTOLYSIS 411 



phosphorus poisoning, dealing with an immigration of fat 

 from the blood stream, that is, with a fatty infiltration, one 

 must necessarily be intensely interested in the statement of 

 Mavrakis 35 that there may be found the well-known his- 

 tological appearance of fatty degeneration in specimens 

 when an aqueous suspension of yellow phosphorus has been 

 injected into a branch of the portal vein of a liver which has 

 been excluded from the circulation and then left otherwise 

 unmolested. Under the author's direction his student, 

 P. Saxl, 36 has repeated this experiment. He was able to 

 fully convince himself that under the experimental condi- 

 tions named tissue changes may be produced which are 

 histologically entirely comparable to the picture of fatty 

 degeneration. Exact analyses, however, indicated that even 

 in this case there is no actual new formation of fat by con- 

 version of the protein of the cellular protoplasm, but that 

 because of the increased tissue autolysis there is a his- 

 tological manifestation of fat previously present but in- 

 visible. Here, too, should be mentioned the experiments of 

 Ernst Weinland, in the course of which he believed he found 

 evidence of an autolytic new formation of higher fatty acids 

 * ' absolutely in minute but relatively in large amount " in the 

 expressed juice of the larvae of certain flies (calliphora) ; 

 which new formation, following the Voit traditions, he inter- 

 preted as a formation of fat from protein. As a matter of 

 fact, however, with general recognition of the care involved 

 in these studies, it seems probable to the author that only the 

 more recent experiments of Weinland 37 have been conducted 

 with a reliable method of estimating fatty acids, and that his 

 absolute results are quite too small and variable to permit 

 one to recognize them as proving the position (fat disintegra- 



95 C. Mavrakis (Athens) , Arch. f. Anat. u. Physiol., 1904, 94. 



86 P. Saxl (under direction of 0. v. Fiirth), Hofmeister's Beitr., 10, 

 447, 1907; L. Hess and P. Saxl (v. Noorden's Clinic, Vienna), Virchow's Arch., 

 202, 148, 1910; cf. also A. Krontowski (Kiev), Zeitschr. f. Biol., 54, 479, 1908. 



37 E. Weinland (Munich), Zeitschr. f. Biol., 52, 1909; cf. also Biol. Cen- 

 tralbl., 29, 565, 1909. 



