THE OUTLOOK 597 



The synthesis and control of artificial enzymes will revolutionize the 

 science and art of organic synthesis and place in our hands a multitude 

 of inestimably valuable products which have hitherto been regarded 

 as costly rarities, the curiosities of a chemical museum. At the same 

 time, of course, the production of many substances which are already 

 manufactured, or derived from the cultivation of plants or animals, 

 will be very greatly cheapened. But, above all, the artificial produc- 

 tion and the control of enzymes holds out the hope of accomplishing 

 the synthesis of foodstuffs under conditions independent of climatic 

 variations, and in the immediate neighborhood of the great centers 

 of population, thus eliminating for the great majority of humanity 

 the enormous addition to the cost of food-values which is comprised 

 in the expense of transportation. The synthesis of palatable carbo- 

 hydrates and fats, sufficing for a certain proportion of our dietary, 

 when we once acquire control of the enzymes, should not present any 

 insuperable difficulties. The proteins are a far more complex problem 

 because of the diversity of units of which they are composed and the 

 necessity for the provision of each one of them, nor will the synthesis 

 of amino-acids suffice, for while these satisfy merely nutritional 

 requirements they are not palatable and their ingestion in requisite 

 amounts introduces abnormal conditions into the alimentary canal 

 which are not well tolerated. The synthesis of "protein-sparers" of 

 the type of gelatin, polypeptides which may be utilized with advantage 

 to reduce our protein ration, would doubtless be the first step in this 

 direction. 



After, all, however, it may well turn out that the most practicable 

 way to synthesize enzymes is to permit organisms to make them for us. 

 Not the complex organisms of the present-day farm, but unicellular 

 organisms which we may cultivate in vats. We have utilized such 

 organisms since the earliest dawn of history to make alcohol and 

 acetic acid for us, and at the present day we utilize unicellular organ- 

 isms, yeasts or bacteria, in the manufacture of bread, of cheese, in the 

 preparation of hides for tanning and other processes of manufacture. 

 This type of industry, which is as yet barely in its infancy, has received 

 a powerful stimulus through the necessities created by the war, and 

 while in the allied countries a special organism was utilized to manu- 

 facture acetone for the preparation of explosives, in Germany yeast 

 was cultivated in media consisting of inorganic salts and glucose, as 

 a means of manufacturing protein. This protein, and the fats, poly- 

 saccharides (glycogen) and vitamines which the yeast-cell also con- 

 tains, might well be employed as a desirable and palatable article for 

 human consumption, but the method in which it was chiefly employed 

 in Germany during the war appears to have been as a concentrated feed, 

 economical of production and transport, for the nourishment of cattle. 

 The gradual replacement of the crude and wasteful, but picturesque 

 and health-giving processes of the farm, interwoven with our remotest 

 origins and endeared to us by innumerable historial associations, by 



