418 FORMATION OF FAT FROM PROTEIN 



taking up an increased amount of fat. Ees redit ad triarios : 

 the last reserves enter the fray if the legionaries are de- 

 stroyed. If the cell then succeeds in mastering the poison, 

 the victory is through the aid of a fatty regeneration ; if even 

 this be of no service, the cell dies the death of a hero ; in spite 

 of the fatty infiltration degeneration ensues. ' ' 54 



Association of Fat Phanerosis in the Phenomena of 

 Fatty Degeneration. Probably, however, it is not correct 

 to end the matter by attributing solely to fatty infiltration 

 all of the appearances which the older pathologists recog- 

 under the name " fatty degeneration. " To the author's 

 mind it is entirely logical to assume as well a superimposi- 

 tion of the process of fat phanerosis. We have had under 

 discussion the fact that when phosphorus is injected into the 

 portal vein the picture of a fatty degeneration may be pro- 

 duced even in a liver removed from the body. Besides in case 

 of the isolated, artificially perfused hearts of warm-blooded 

 animals it has been shown that the same noxious factors (as 

 incomplete nutrition and poisons) which cause fatty de- 

 generation in the living body, give rise to " fatty change" 

 also of the isolated heart, in which there can be no sus- 

 picion of the entrance of fat from any of the fat depots. 55 

 Di Christina, for example, ascribed to phosporus two entirely 

 distinct influences, one a necrosing, the other a steatogenous 

 action (the latter in the sense of a mobilization of fat in the 

 depots). 56 We have, too, every reason for assuming that an 

 intoxication, such as phosphorus poisoning, does not leave 

 the protein material of the liver undisturbed ; according to a 

 study made in Kossel's laboratory 57 catabolism of the pro- 

 tein molecule is likely to result in a spliting off of compounds 

 rich in bases with a residue of material poor in bases and 

 nitrogen. That such a process of disintegration cannot be 



M G. Rosenfeld, 1. c., p. 84. 



56 A. Cesaris-Demel (Pisa), Arch. ital. de Biol., 51, 197, 1908. 

 " Di Christina, Virchow's Arch., 181, 509, 1905. 



"A. J. Wakeman (A. Kossel's Lab., Heidelberg), Zeitschr. f. physiol. 

 Chem., 44, 335, 1905. 



