136 THE ADRENALS AND THE GENERAL OXIDATION PROCESSES. 



animal organs, especially the liver, owing to its contained 

 oxidation ferment, were able to oxidize formaldehyde and 

 methylic alcohol into formic acid. The action of the oxidation 

 ferment upon glycose is well known, as also the researches of 

 Claude Bernard, renewed by Lepine, who attributes the oxida- 

 tion of the sugar in the blood to the action of a special fer- 

 ment: the "glycolytic ferment." Spitzer 5 has since shown 

 that this property of destroying sugar did not belong to the 

 blood alone, but that it was a general attribute of protoplasm, 

 though concerned in no way with the life of the latter. In 

 fact, the glycolytic property still exists in old and dry extracts 

 of organs. It is therefore very probable that the sugar-destroy- 

 ing ferment which only acts in the presence of oxygen is identical 

 with the tissue-oxidizing ferment'' 



To show the true importance of these researches, their 

 exact bearing upon our analysis must be clearly defined. Espe- 

 cially important is it to realize that the experiments referred 

 to were performed outside the body, the tissues being used as 

 sources of oxygen, whereas our analysis, on the contrary, ap- 

 plies to reactions within the body, where the tissues take up oxy- 

 gen and use it in their metabolism. In the case of the blood- 

 serum, however, these extra corpore experiments give a true 

 picture of the intra corpore function, since we are dealing with 

 an oxidizing ferment. The chemical bodies referred to, there- 

 fore, salicylic aldehyde, benzilic alcohol, etc., faithfully rep- 

 resent poisons that have reached the circulation, while the 

 main process of more or less complete neutralization to which 

 they are submitted is correspondingly portrayed by their con- 

 version into salicylic acid, benzoic acid, etc. In other words, 

 they do in the body what the experiments showed them to do 

 outside the body: i.e., they take up a part of, or all, the oxygen 

 of the oxidizing ferment, for which the serum acts as a vehicle 

 or menstruum. Reducing the process to its simplest expres- 

 sion: both, tissues and poisons, act as reducing agents upon the 

 oxidizing compound. 



A critical analysis of Salkowski's paper clearly shows that 

 all the attributes necessary to such a process as that just 



6 Spitzer: Berliner klin. Wochenschrift, No. 42, 1894. 



