THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF IONS 461 



ties must compel us to question whether we are indeed 

 dealing with the effects of ions in the case of the inorganic 

 acids and oxalic acid. The idea, which I have already 

 suggested, that we are dealing with secondary effects in these 

 cases, seems to me preferable. 



Among these secondary effects the relations to the fer- 

 mentative processes which are going on at all times in living 

 tissues are the first to be considered. We know from the 

 work of Emil Fischer how much fermentability is a function 

 of the geometric configuration of the molecule. It is possible 

 that the apparent difficulties which these organic acids at 

 present offer to the assumption of the physiological effects of 

 ions may yet become a fruitful support for the theory of 

 ionization. 



III. EXPERIMENTS WITH BASES 



LiOH, NaOH, and KOH were especially considered. A 

 few series of experiments were also made with ^Ba(OH) 2 

 and ^Sr(OH) 2 . The experiments again showed that these 

 bases have the same effect upon the absorption of water 

 by the muscle when they are used in such concentrations 

 that the same number of hydroxyl ions are contained in 

 equal volumes of the solutions. 



The method was the same, as that employed in the case of 

 acid. Solutions of all these bases were prepared which 

 were one- tenth normal with reference to OH. Of these 

 solutions 5, 10, 15, or 20 c.c. were added to 100 c.c. of a 

 0.7 per cent. NaCl solution. The increase in weight which 

 the muscle suffered in these solutions in one hour was de- 

 termined and is expressed in the following tables in per- 

 centage of the original weight of the muscle. We will 

 give first of all the experiments with LiOH, NaOH, and 

 KOH. V indicates again the concentration of the base; 

 and F=210 means that 1 mol. of the alkali is dissolved in 

 210 liters of water. 



