PROPOSITIONS. 83 



glands, secrete a fluid rich in pepsin, which constitutes the 

 true soluble ferment of the stomach, the office of which is the 

 conversion of food of certain known qualities into peptones or 

 chyme. The pancreas elaborates another soluble ferment, 

 pancreatin, or trypsin, which acts upon another portion of 

 the food. Other portions of the alimentary tract furnish 

 other soluble ferments, which in their turn act upon the food. 

 The combined effect of all these is to fit the food for reception 

 by the blood, through the process known as osmosis. 



It will be seen at once that these processes of digestion are, 

 in fact, extraneous to the body ; that is, they are in receptacles 

 in which food material is met by appropriate soluble ferments, 

 by which it is dissolved and its chemical constituents re-ar- 

 ranged, remoleculized. (I use the word "remoleculize" to 

 designate that disturbance or change of the molecular form 

 of matter which occurs under the influence of the life force. 

 As an example, I may take the change that occurs in starch 

 in the presence of saliva, which is expressed in the following 

 formula : 



Starch. Water. Glucose. 



C 6 H 10 5 + H 2 = C 6 H 12 6 



It will be seen here that the digestive body, ptyaline, does 

 not enter into combination, but, by its presence, causes a com- 

 bination of the water and starch, producing a remoleculization 

 with the formation of glucose. Again, the digestive body 

 given out by the yeast plant, when in contact with cane sugar, 

 dissolved in water, induces the following changes : 



Cane Sugar. Water. Glucose. Lavelose. 



C^H^On + H 2 == C 6 H 12 6 + C 6 H 12 6 

 This result is different in that two new bodies are formed 

 by the juncture of the two with which we began. In the use 

 of the word we apply it to any possible molecular change, 

 without expressing the character of that change. We may 

 say that the yeast plant destroys sugar by remoleculizing it, 

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