POSTMORTEM FORMATION OF LACTIC ACID 457 



septic autolysis, which leave no doubt of the enzymatic 

 nature of the process. The acid met with may be said to be 

 S-lactic acid. (The observations indicating the occurrence 

 of inactive fermentative lactic acid in autolysis may be fully 

 explained, in the writer's opinion, by the associated influence 

 of microorganisms.) 9 When it is recalled that the amount 

 of lactic acid in a specimen of tissue pulp for a time increases 

 until it reaches a maximum, and thereafter undergoes 

 diminution, and that this decrease (as recently shown among 

 others, by Ssobolew, 10 in the Vienna Physiological Insti- 

 tute) also takes place under experimental conditions surely 

 exclusive of bacterial influence, we seem justified in assum- 

 ing the existence of enzymes which decompose lactic acid, as 

 well as of those which cause the formation of this substance. 

 When a tissue juice contains an insufficient proportion of 

 alkali lactic acid formation ceases, apparently at a certain 

 degree of concentration of hydrogen ions, by autoinhibi- 

 tion. 11 Although even earlier investigations 12 indicated the 

 improbability of a direct connection between the amount of 

 glycogen of a tissue (especially of muscle) and postmortem 

 acid change, the author's pupil, E. Tiirkel, 13 recently de- 

 ceased, was able to prove that a liver, even if practically free 

 from glycogen and sugar, is capable of forming lactic acid in 

 the course of autolysis, and that, too, in proportions not ma- 

 terially less than is a liver with normal carbohydrate con- 



Mochizuki and Arima, Kikkoji, Inouye and Kondo; cf. Literature: C. 

 Oppenheimer, Die Fermente, 3d ed., 475, 1909; E. Salkowski, Zeitschr. f. 

 physiol. Chemie., 63, 237, 1909; R. S. Frew (Salkowski's Lab.), ibid., 60, 15, 

 1909; T. Saito and J. Yoshikawa, ibid., 62, 107, 1909; T. Saiki, Jour, of Biol. 

 Chem., 7, 17, 1910; G. v. Stein, Inaug. Dissert., Berlin, 1911; Biochem. 

 Zeitschr., 40, 186, 1912; H. Youssouf (Salkowski's Lab.), Virchow's Arch., 

 207, 374, 1912. 



10 N. Ssobolew (under direction of 0. v. Fiirth), Biochem. Zeitschr., 47, 

 367, 1912. 



11 K. Kondo (G. Embden's Lab., Frankfurt a. M.), Biochem. Zeitschr., 45, 

 63, 1912. 



13 Cf. Literature: O. v. Fttrth, Ergebn. d. Physiol., 2', 594-600, 1903. 



18 R. Ttirkel (under direction of O. v. Fttrth), Biochem. Zeitschr., 20, 431, 

 1909. 



