APP.] CHEMICAL BASIS OF THE ANIMAL BODY. 719 



hitherto been regarded as syntonin. The hemi-albumose has not 

 been so frequently observed ; it was however isolated by Meissner ; it 

 is apparently the body called by him A-peptone. It possesses several 

 peculiar features. If its solutions are heated they partially coagulate 

 at about 60 65 C. ; the precipitate is soluble at about 70 C. and is 

 -re-precipitated as th.e temperature again falls. It also yields a precipitate 

 with nitric acid and potassic ferrocyanide and this also is soluble at the 

 higher temperature reprecipitating on cooling. In these respects it 

 closely resembles a proteid body observed by Bence-Jones in the urine 

 of osteomalacia. It approaches myosin in being readily soluble in a 

 10 per cent, solution of sodic chloride. 



If however albumin be digested with in sufficient or with imperfectly 

 active pepsin, or simply with dilute hydrochloric acid at 40 C., anti- 

 albumose is not formed, but in its place a body makes its appearance 

 which Kiihne calls anti-albumate l . Its characteristic property is that it 

 cannot be converted by peptic digestion into peptone, though it can be so 

 changed by tryptic digestion. It is in fact the parapeptone of Meissner. 

 It may perhaps be advisable, now that Meissner's parapeptone is 

 cleared up, to reserve the name parapeptone for the initial products of 

 both peptic and tryptic digestion, and to speak of anti-albumose and hemi- 

 albumose as being both parapeptones. But in this sense parapeptone 

 will be an intermediate and not a collateral product of digestion. 



Meissner also described a particularly insoluble form of his parapep- 

 tone as dyspeptone, and another intermediate product as metapeptone ; 

 but further investigation of both these bodies, as well as of his B-peptone, 

 is necessary. Under the influence of dilute hydrochloric acid, anti- 

 albumate becomes changed into a body which Kiihne calls anti-albumid 

 and which seems identical with the very insoluble proteid described by 

 Schiitzenberger as 'hemiprotein,' and probably with Meissner's dyspep- 

 tone. The same body is produced at once in company with products 

 belonging to the hemi-group by the action of 3 to 5 per cent, sulphuric 

 acid on native albumin or fibrin. The following tables shew the 

 relations and genesis of the bodies we have just described. The several 

 products (antipeptone, &c.) are given in duplicate, on the hypothesis 

 (which though not proved is probable) that the changes of digestion are 

 essentially hydrolytic changes 2 , accompanied by a deduplication ; that 

 just as a molecule of starch splits up into at least two molecules 

 of dextrose, or as a molecule of cane-sugar splits up into a molecule of 

 dextrose and a molecule of levulose, so a molecule of antialbumose, for 

 instance, splits up into two molecules of antipeptone, and so on. But 

 the whole scheme is of course only provisional. 



1 An albumate must not be confounded with an albuminate. 



2 Henninger, loc. cit. p. 49. 



