70 EXZYME& 



Occurrence of Catalase wider Normal and Pathological Condi- 

 tionsJ~^ — Battelli and Stern found that the catalytic power of the tis- 

 sues endures man}' hours after dyath. Its abundance is ditferent for 

 different organs of the same animal, but remarkably constant for the 

 same organ in the same species. In general the order in decreasing 

 strength is: liver, kidney, blood, spleen, gastro-intestinal mucosa, sal- 

 ivary glands, lung, pancreas, testicle, heart, muscle, brain ; but this 

 order varies in different species. Catalase is abundant even in the 

 early embrj'o (Mendel and Leavenworth) and in sea urchin eggs it 

 increases rapidly after they are fertilized (Lyon).'* Leucocytes con- 

 tain little, most of that in the blood being in the stroma of the red 

 blood-corpuscles. The body fluids contain little or none. Injected 

 intravenously, catalase (of the liver) is destroyed rapidly, and does 

 not appear in the urine ; it does not cause any toxic effects, nor does 

 it increase resistance to poisoning by venoms. The tissues also con- 

 tain anti-catalases, and still further a substance which protects the 

 catalase from the anti-catalase ; this protective substance is called the 

 philocatalase by Battelli and Stern. 



The gas evolved by the action of pus on H0O2 was found by ]Mar- 

 shall ''° to be pure oxygen, each c.c. of a certain sample of pus exam- 

 ined liberating 133.9 c.c. of gas. The active constituent of pus, he 

 states, is contained in the serum and not in the corpuscles. Substances 

 decomposing HoOj have been found also in bacterial cultures, first by 

 Gottstein, and later in the cell juices expressed from tubercle bacilli 

 by Hahn. Loewenstein ^° found an enzyme agreeing with catalase in 

 filtered bouillon cultures of diphtheria bacilli and staphj-lococci, but 

 not from tetanus, typhoid, and colon bacilli or cholera vibrios; the 

 catalase is quite distinct from the toxin. He also found that the ad- 

 dition of H2O2 to a diphtheria toxin-antitoxin mixture destroyed the 

 toxin, leaving the antitoxin free. A similar destruction of tetanus 

 toxin by peroxides, first demonstrated by Sieber, can occur without 

 the catalase. 



Winternitz ^' and his associates have made extensive studios of the 

 catalase activity of the blood and tissues in disease. They found that 

 all tissues have reduced catalase activity in chronic nephritis, in pro- 

 portion to the severity of the condition, and experimental nephritis 

 in animals has the same effect; the blood shows gi'oat reduction in 

 catalase in uremia, and a less reduction witli less severe nephritic 

 manifestations: Eclampsia shows little or much reduction of catalase 

 in the blood in proportion to the amount of renal involvement ; normal 

 pregnancy and labor have no effect. Anemia is associated with irregu- 



7Vb Conooniinfr the oatalaso of lower animals see Zicgor. Rioclicm. Zcit., 1915 

 (69), .39. 

 78Amer. .lour. I'livsiol., l!)Od (Sf)). inO. 

 70 Univ. of Pcnn. Med. Bull., 1902 (15), 366. 

 RoWien. klin. Woeh., 100.1 (10), 1.393. 

 81 Review in Aroli. Int. Med., 1911 (7), 624. 



