XXVII 



ON ION-PROTEID COMPOUNDS AND THEIR ROLE IN 

 THE MECHANICS OF LIFE-PHENOMENA. THE 

 POISONOUS CHARACTER OF A PURE NaCl SOLU- 

 TION 1 



I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON ION-PROTEID COMPOUNDS 



IN this series of articles I intend to publish some new 

 facts and ideas concerning the constitution of living matter, 

 and to apply these facts to a number of life-phenomena. 

 The new facts concerning the constitution of living matter 

 are chiefly as follows : The salts or electrolytes in general do 

 not exist in living tissues as such exclusively, but are partly 

 in combination with proteids. The salt or electrolyte mol- 

 ecules do not enter into this combination as a whole, but 

 through their ions. The great importance of these ion-proteid 

 compounds lies in the fact that by the substitution of one 

 ion for another the physical properties of the proteid com- 

 pounds change (for instance, their power to absorb water 

 and their state of matter). We thus possess in these ion- 

 proteid compounds essential constituents of living matter 

 which can be modified at desire, and hence enable us to vary 

 and control the life-phenomena themselves. 



By making experiments on the effects of ions upon the 

 absorption of water by muscle I found that a muscle does 

 not take up the same amount of water in equimolecular 

 solutions of various chlorides. 2 The differences were very 

 striking. While in a 0.7 per cent. NaCl solution the muscle 

 absorbed about 7 per cent, of its own weight of water within 

 eighteen hours, it absorbed about 40-50 per cent, of its 



1 American Journal of Physiology, Vol. Ill (1900), p. 327. 



2 Part II, p. 510. 



544 



