THE OXIDIZING SUBSTANCE OF THE BLOOD-PLASMA. 133 



freezing mixture twenty-four or forty-eight hours, and when 

 frozen as hard as a board. 



4. "Horse- lungs and kidneys preserved twelve to fourteen 

 days in alcohol at 75 C. unmistakably give benzoic acid or 

 salicylic acid after soaking in a NaCl physiological solution, when 

 treated as customary in experiments; this is also the case when 

 the organs are not preserved in alcohol in toto, but previously 

 reduced to a magma, then hardened in alcohol. 



5. "Oxidation of benzilic alcohol and salicylic aldehyde 

 can be caused, in weak NaCl solution, by extracts of horse- lung 

 and kidneys. This is even possible when the organs, after 

 having been treated two hours before with alcohol and ether, 

 are then washed in salt-water, and also when the extracts are 

 treated with blood containing salicylic aldehyde. 



6. "Organs treated with alcohol and ether gave, all else 

 being equal, less salicylic acid than fresh organs; still, the 

 extracts possessed the property of transferring the oxygen of 

 the air to salicylic aldehyde: a property which is totally absent 

 in the case of simple alkaline solutions. 



7. "That in this oxidation the action of a ferment or 

 enzyme prevails is proven by boiling the organs: i.e., ebullition 

 causes entire loss of the oxidizing power. 



8. "Jaquet's conclusion that blood alone cannot cause 

 oxidation of salicylic aldehyde into salicylic acid somewhat 

 contradicts the results of some of Salkowski's older experi- 

 ments. Indeed, one year before the publication of Schmiede- 

 berg's first work (1882) he had obtained oxidations from Hood 

 alone; so that Jaquet's proposition is valuable in that it con- 

 firms these older experiments. 



9. "This oxidizing power of blood alone, pointed out by 

 Salkowski in 1881, was recently confirmed by Abelous and 

 Biarnes. 4 These authors so disposed their experiments as to 

 insure the passage of atmospheric air through the blood treated 

 with salicylic aldehyde. 



10. "In his older work Salkowski attributed this oxidizing 

 power to the blood-corpuscles, which he thought were the carriers 

 of oxygen; he now believes that this idea can no longer prevail, 



* Abelous and Biarn6s: Archives de Physiologic, vol., 1895. 



