422 FORMATION OF FAT FROM PROTEIN 



Kawamura, 70 with the task of determining by means of a 

 great number of morphological methods (determination of 

 their behavior with neutral red, nile-blue, and a number of 

 other staining reagents, their refraction in glycerol, etc.) 

 whether the cholesterol-esters can be definitely distinguished 

 from the glycerolesters and the other lipoids. The author 

 contrasts (unnecessarily introducing new terms for previ- 

 ously known conditions) steatosis (fatty infiltration) with 

 myelinosis (fat phanerosis), and divides the former into 

 glycerol-steatosis, cholesterol-steatosis and lipoid steatosis. 

 It is very clear that only thorough chemical studies in close 

 coordination with morphological observations could possibly 

 determine the value of such classifications. It is, however, 

 quite a matter for congratulation that morphologists are also 

 largely being brought to recognize that differentiation by 

 staining methods is really nothing more than a very special 

 form of chemical or physical-chemical reaction, and that it is 

 really desirable that they supplement this by other and better 

 defined chemical methods. The tremendous enlargement of 

 the sum total of scientific knowledge is constantly leading to 

 the rise of new specializations and changes of limitations. 

 Unfortunately in view of the limited receptive power of the 

 human brain this cannot be avoided. Yet the chemist, idling 

 between his tubes and his jars, and ignoring designedly and 

 stubbornly everything which he cannot boil, extract and 

 distill, fits just as sadly in the field of modern science as does 

 the morphologist, to whom nothing else seems worth bother- 

 ing about, and who regards nothing as important as his 

 stained sections. Freer vision will come only to the ap- 

 pointed, to him for whom the thickets of the lowland are too 

 confined and who strives upward to the heights. 



70 R. Kawamura, Die Cholesterinesterverfettung (Patliol. Instit., Freiburg, 

 i. B.), Jena, G. Fischer, 1911; cf. also F. M. Hanes (Columbia Univ., New 

 York), Johns Hopkins Hosp. Bull., 23, 77, 1912. 



