A HISTOEY OF METABOLISM 53 



results may be of three kinds: (1) the donor may be publicly acknowl- 

 edged; (2) the donor may be honestly forgotten and the recipient may 

 honestly believe that he has for years held the same views; or (3) the 

 donor may be well known to the recipient but be deliberately and sys- 

 tematically ignored. The last-named reaction is the one most difficult to 

 bear with becoming humility of spirit, but, interpreted in the light of 

 history, it signifies but little. It matters little to the world at large 

 whether Bacon wrote Shakespeare or Shakespeare wrote it himself. The 

 heritage- of. the masterpieces is what matters. 



Before Liebig's death he wrote to Wohler concerning the publication 

 of their correspondence as follows : "When we are dead and gone these 

 letters which united us in life will be as a token for the memory of man 

 of a not frequent example of two men who, without jealousy or envy, 

 strove in the same field and always remained intimately united in friend- 

 ship." 



Liebig's Munich Period. In 1852, at the age of forty-nine, Liebig 

 moved to Munich to become professor of chemistry there. His creative 

 work ceased and a period of literary activity set in. He engaged in 

 violent polemics with Pasteur, maintaining that alcoholic fermentation 

 was a purely chemical phenomenon and not one of biological origin. He 

 gave popular lectures in court circles and, with Richard Wagner, shared 

 the popular adulation of the town. When Liebig's new gluten bread was 

 put upon the market the townspeople stood in long lines before the 

 bakeries to receive the precious product. 



It may be of interest to pass here to the viewpoint of Liebig ex- 

 pressed in 1870 just before he died. In the interim the work of Bidder 

 and Schmidt, of Bischoff and Voit, of Voit, and of Pettenkofer and Voit, 

 had appeared, material which is still to be recorded. 



Liebig writes as follows : "On the basis of general experience I for- 

 merly expressed the opinion that the source of mechanical work of the 

 animal body must be sought in the metabolism, especially in the metab- 

 olism of the nitrogen-containing constituents of muscle. The capacity 

 for work in two individuals would therefore depend upon their respective 

 mass of muscle tissue, and the endurance of each would depend on his 

 capacity to rebuild the broken-down muscle substance from the inflowing 

 food material. 



"It is well known that hard-working men eat much meat. An em- 

 ployee (Brauknecht) in Seldmeyer's large beer brewery consumes daily 

 810 gm. of meat, 600 gm. of bread and 8 liters of beer. One should be 

 cautious in adopting the popular Bavarian idea that it is the beer which 

 gives muscular power, for the beer drinkers are also the greatest con- 

 sumers of meat. 



The question regarding the source of muscle power has been confused 

 through a conclusion which has been shown to be false and for which I am to 



