82 The Unity of the Organism 



of the liver for example, or the blood, or the testes or the 

 ovary? The views prevailing to-day among physiologists 

 and biochemists would favor an affirmative answer to these 

 questions. In order to maintain some show of modesty the 

 contention would be that while the chemist is not yet able 

 to make these substances, there is no reason for supposing 

 he will not be later. At any rate, so the view is, except for 

 practical manipulative difficulties the substitutions might 

 be made. 



And it should be pointed out that thinking of the organ- 

 ism as a chemical laboratory, as suggested above, is not a 

 mere literary fancy somewhat tinctured with science. By 

 modifying the conception to the extent of making cells and 

 tissues instead of an individual man the laboratory, it has 

 figured considerably in recent biochemistry. According to 

 Bayliss,^ Hofmeister definitely formulated the idea in 1901, 

 so far as the cell is concerned, and it "is rapidly gaining 

 ground." 



About the clearest statement of it I have come upon was 

 made in 1913 by F. G. Hopkins. This biochemist illustrates 

 the synthesizing activities of the organism by several spe- 

 cific examples, the last of which concerns nicotinic acid. 

 When this "is fed to animals, it is excreted as trigonellin, a 

 known vegetable base. This conversion involves methyla- 

 tion, and is of striking character as an instance of the 

 artificially induced production of a plant alkaloid in the 

 animal body." ^ * At the conclusion of the illustrations 

 Hopkins says : "The known facts have, one feels, an aca- 

 demic character in the view of the physiologist and even in 

 that of the pharmacologist, to whom we owe most of our 

 knowledge about them. But, in my opinion, the chemical 

 response of the tissues to the chemical stimulus of foreign 



* Looking upon the production here instanced as "artificially induced" 

 is worth noticing, since it clearly suggests that the conception of the 

 organism as "chemical laboratory" implies not only the laboratory but 

 the chemist who works in it. 



