390 PHYSIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY. 



Coupling with glycuronic acid occurs in certain substituted 

 alcohols, aldehydes and ketones (?), which probably first pass over 

 into alcohol (SUNDVIK). Chloral hydrate, C 2 C] 3 OH4-H 2 0, passes, 

 after it has been converted into trichlorethyl-alcohol by a reduc- 

 tion, into a laevo-gyrate reducible acid, itrochloralic acid or 

 trichlorethyl-glycuronic acid, CgClaHg.CeHjO; (MuscuLUS and 

 v. MEEING). Trichlorbutyl-alcohol and butyl-chloral hydrate also 

 pass into trichlorbutyl-glycuronic acid. Tertiary amyl- and butyl- 

 alcohol also undergo (in rabbits but not in man) a coupling with 

 glycuronic acid. In animals which have starved until the glycogen 

 has disappeared from the muscles and liver and which are given 

 chloral hydrate or dimethyl carbinol, coupled glycuronic acid s 

 appear in the urine (THIEEFELDEE). On account of these facts the 

 albuminous bodies are considered the origin of the glycuronic 

 acid.. It may perhaps originate from such bodies as the proteids 

 which are found widely diffused in the body and from which 

 carbohydrates or near-related acids may be split. 



The aromatic combinations pass as a rule, so far as we know, 

 into the urine after a previous partial oxidation or after a synthesis 

 with other bodies. The question whether the benzol ring is 

 destroyed in the body is still undecided, but at least in certain 

 cases such a destruction is very probable. 



The fact that benzol may be oxidized outside of the body into 

 carbon dioxide, oxalic acid, and volatile fatty acids has been known 

 for a long time, and we may refer the reader to the investigations 

 of DEECHSEL, mentioned in the first chapter, in which this 

 experimenter obtained, by the electrolysis of phenol, normal caproic 

 acid and afterward substances in which the amount of carbon 

 decreased constantly until he obtained the end-products of the 

 exchange of material. As in these experiments a splitting of the 

 benzol ring must take place before the formation of the body of 

 the fatty series, also when aromatic bodies are burnt in the animal 

 body, we must admit that first a rupture of the benzol ring takes 

 place with the formation of fatty bodies. If this does not take 

 place, then the benzol nucleus is eliminated with the urine as an 

 aromatic combination of one kind or another. As the difficultly - 

 burnt benzol nucleus can protect from destruction a substance 

 belonging to the fatty, series and coupled with it, which is the case 



