162 PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTION OF ALBUMOSES & PEPTONES. [BOOK II. 



are injected into the blood-vessels of living dogs, certain remarkable 

 phenomena are observed, the most important of which are first, that 

 the animal passes into a, state of narcosis, resembling chloroform 

 narcosis, accompanied by a great fall of the general blood-pressure ; 

 second, that the blood drawn from the blood-vessels has lost its 

 power of spontaneous coagulation. The material employed in these 

 researches was Witte's ' Peptonum siccum,' a commercial preparation, 

 which Kubne's researches have since shewn to be composed of a 

 mixture of albumoses. 



The obser- Fano *, the year after the above interesting results 

 vations of were made known, published observations which con- 

 Fano. firmed and extended those of Schmidt-Mulheim. 



He found, employing essentially the same preparation as Schmidt- 

 Mulheim, that, as a rule, in dogs, the coagulation of blood was 

 prevented by injection of peptones in the proportion of 0*3 grm. 

 for each kilo, of body-weight. Curiously, he discovered that when 

 injected into the blood-vessels of rabbits, no change in the coagula- 

 bility of the blood occurred. When Fano injected tryptones, i.e. 

 antipeptones resulting from the digestion of proteids by trypsin, into 

 the blood of dogs, no change in the coagulability occurred. 



Fano found that peptone-plasma could be rendered coagulable by 

 diluting with water and passing C0 2 through it. He also discovered 

 that the lymph of animals whose blood has been rendered uncoagu- 

 lable by peptones, is also uncoagulable. 



The obser- When the researches of Kiihne and Chittenden had 

 vations of Pol- sn ewn that the commercial peptones, which had fur- 

 nished the raw material with which Schmidt-Mulheim 

 and Fano had worked, consisted in great part of albumoses, it became 

 obviously necessary to repeat their observations with albumoses and 

 with peptones prepared by the light of recent researches. Accord- 

 ingly, Dr Pollitzer, working in Ktihne's laboratory, undertook the 

 investigation. He found that both albumoses "and amphopeptones 

 are possessed of active physiological properties, inasmuch as both 

 classes of bodies induce narcosis in dogs and cats, which is much 

 more enduring in the case of albumoses, probably in consequence 

 of peptones being more readily eliminated, a result connected, doubt- 

 less, with their much greater diffusibility. Whilst a sufficiently 

 large dose of any of the albumoses (somewhat more than 0'3 grm. 

 per kilo, of body-weight) is inevitably fatal, peptone never produces a 

 fatal result so long as the kidneys of the animal are intact. Schmidt- 

 Mulheim had found that after the injection of his preparations there 

 was an invariable fall of blood -pressure, and Pollitzer proved that 

 this result follows the introduction of any of the albumoses or pep- 

 tones except perhaps antipeptone, of which the action is doubtful. 



1 Fano, ' Das Verhalten des Peptons und Tryptons gegen Blut und Lymphe. ' Du 

 Bois Reymond's Archiv f. Anat. u. Phys. Phys. Abtheil. 1881, p. 277. 



