436 ACETONE BODIES 



Again, ethyl alcohol may give rise to diacetic acid in 

 experimental perfusion of the liver (probably by way of ace- 

 taldehyde). 11 



Is fi-oxyloutyric Add a Product of Normal Metabolism? 

 Another important question, which for the present must be 

 accepted as an open one, is whether /?-oxybutyric acid is to be 

 regarded as distinctly a product of normal or only of patho- 

 logical metabolism. The author's early deceased friend, 

 Leo Schwarz, who insured for himself a lasting place in 

 science by his investigations upon diabetes, long since satis- 

 fied himself that ingested 0-oxybutyric acid is metabolized 

 with more difficulty by diabetics than by normal human be- 

 ings (whereas ingested acetone is apparently attacked with 

 equal difficulty by the normal and by the diabetic economy). 

 Therefore it can scarcely be thought that acetone plays any 

 important role in normal metabolism, as it would other- 

 wise necessarily appear also normally. But one cannot ex- 

 clude the possibility, in case of /?-oxybutyric acid, of its 

 occurrence as an intermediate product of physiological 

 metabolism. If this be true, then an increased excretion of 

 this substance should be due to the fact that its destruction 

 in the economy is diminished under pathological conditions. 

 It might be, too, that in pathological conditions the fault 

 lies in an increased formation of the acetone bodies. Emb- 

 den found in his perfusion experiments that the liver of the 

 dog with pancreatic diabetes undergoes a change in its 

 normal function of forming diacetic acid, in the form of a 

 decided exaggeration. 12 As he further found that the ability 

 of the surviving liver to induce disappearance of diacetic 



11 N. Masuda (G. Embden's Lab.), Biochem, Zeitschr., 45, 140, 1912. From 

 another standpoint alcohol is to be classed with the antiketogens along with 

 other substances, as tartaric acid and glycerol-aldehyde, which, according to 

 experimental conditions, can either serve as a source for the acetone bodies or 

 act to inhibit the formation of acetone. (Cf. G. Embden and K. Ohta, Biochem. 

 Zeitschr., 45, 170, 1912; R. T. Woodyatt, Jour. Amer. Med. Assoc., 55, 2109, 

 cited in Jahresber. f. Tierchem., 40, 818, 1912.) 



13 G. Embden, and L. Lattes, Hofmeister's Beitr., 11, 327, 1908. 



