THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



In the same way Ostwald attributes the greatest 

 significance to catalysis in connection with the vital 

 processes, and seeks to explain them on his theory of 

 energy by reference to the duration of chemical proc- 

 esses. In the discourse "On Catalysis" that he de- 

 livered at Hamburg in 1901 he says: 



We must recognize the enzyma as catalysators that arise in 

 the organism during the life of the cells, and by their action 

 relieve the living being of the greater part of its duties. Not 

 only are digestion and assimilation controlled by enzyma from 

 first to last, but the fundamental vital action of most organisms, 

 the production of the necessary chemical energy by combustion 

 at the expense of the oxygen in the air, takes place with the 

 explicit co-operation of enzyma, and would be impossible with- 

 out them. Free oxygen is, as is well known, a very inert body 

 at the temperature of the living body, and the maintenance 

 of life would be impossible without some acceleration of its 

 rate of reaction. 



In his further observations on catalysis and metabolism 

 he says that they are both equally subject to the physico- 

 chemical laws of energy. 



Max Verworn has given us a very searching analysis 

 of the molecular process in the catalytic aspect of metab • 

 olism in his Biogen Hypothesis (1903), "a critical and 

 experimental study of the processes in living matter." 

 He simplifies the catalytic theory of the enzyma by 

 tracing all the phenomena of life to the catalytic metab- 

 olism of one single chemical compound, the plasm, and 

 regards its active molecules, the biogens, as the ultimate 

 chemical factors of the vital process. While the enzyma 

 hypothesis assumes that there are in each cell a great 

 number of different enzyma which are all co-ordinated, 

 and each of which only performs its little special work, 

 the biogen hypothesis deduces all the vital phenomena 

 from one compound, the biogenetic plasm; and thus the 

 biogen molecules, which increase by division into parts, 



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