BASES OF UNKNOWN CONSTITUTION 113 



taminated with a small quantity of a highly active substance richer in 

 carbon. Further work will therefore be of the greatest interest. 



Funk and also Schaumann consider that there are a number of 

 substances capable of preventing and curing polyneuritis. The former 

 [1912, 2] has found that certain purine and pyrimidine derivatives have 

 a weak activity in this direction. The crystalline and apparently 

 homogeneous vitamine fraction from rice and from yeast is active in 

 doses of a few centigrams, and when injected subcutaneously such 

 doses will restore a severely paralysed pigeon within a few hours. A 

 substance curing polyneuritis is also present in ox brain, in milk (Funk 

 [1912, i]), and in muscle (Eykman [1897], Cooper [1913]). Edie, 

 Evans, Moore, Simpson, and Webster [1912] have given the name 

 toruline to an antineuritic base from yeast having the formula 

 C 7 H 17 O 5 N 2 . A concomitant effect of a diet of polished rice is a loss 

 of body weight which has been taken into account more particularly in 

 the experiments of Suzuki and his colleagues. In this connection 

 attention may be drawn to the work of Hopkins [1912] which shows 

 that growth is greatly influenced by some as yet undetermined con- 

 stituents of food. 



Sepsine. 



The name sepsine was given more than forty years ago by 

 Schmiedeberg to a poisonous putrefaction product which was more 

 recently isolated by Faust [1903-4] as a crystalline sulphate. Faust 

 used putrid yeast and obtained under the most favourable conditions 

 only 0-03 grm. of sepsine sulphate from 5 kilos, of yeast. The pro- 

 cess of isolation is a complicated one, one of its chief features being 

 that the sepsine is precipitated by mercuric chloride from an aqueous 

 solution rendered strongly alkaline by means of sodium carbonate. 

 Later the sulphate separates out in a crystalline condition by fractional 

 precipitation of the alcoholic solution of the base by means of 

 sulphuric acid dissolved in alcohol. The sulphate can be recrystal- 

 lised and then forms well-developed crystals having according to 

 Faust the composition C 5 H 14 O 2 N 2 , H 2 SO 4 ; his analyses, however, fit 

 equally well or slightly better the formula C 5 H 12 O 2 N 2 , H 2 SO 4 . The 

 free base is a syrup readily soluble in water. 



Sepsine is very unstable ; on repeated evaporation of the aqueous 

 solution of the sulphate on the water bath this salt is transformed 

 according to Faust into cadaverine sulphate, and the substance loses 

 its physiological activity. This transformation, which involves the 

 loss of two oxygen atoms, is without any analogy and very difficult to 



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