PROTEIN AND CIRCULATION 67 



been offered by Halliburton. "He pointed out that the 

 number of the lymphocytes was not commensurate 

 with the work to be done. He calculated that a man 

 of eighty kilos had about four kilos of blood of which 

 some 40 per cent was in the form of corpuscles, that is 

 about 1600 grams. Now as the ratio of white cor- 

 puscles is about 1 : 500 it means that about 3.2 grams of 

 leucocytes are present. Of this amount lymphocytes 

 form at most 30 per cent, and therefore in the blood 

 there would be about one gram of lymphocytes. If 

 this amount were doubled during digestion 'it is diffi- 

 cult to see how two grams of lymphocytes can tackle 

 the enormous burden which every meal must impose 

 upon them/ " (Cathcart.) 



WHAT Is THE EVIDENCE FOR THE SYNTHESIS OF 

 PROTEIN ? 



The Synthetic Action of the Gastric and Intestinal 

 Mucous Membranes. 



Hofmeister has ascribed to the stomach mucous 

 membrane the property of synthesizing protein from 

 proteoses. An outline of his experiment follows 

 at the height of digestion a dog was killed and its 

 stomach and contents divided equally into two parts. 

 One part was immediately placed in boiling water to 

 stop all enzyme and cellular activity and the other 

 portion was placed in an incubator for a period of 

 two hours. The amount of proteose and peptone 

 present in each part was then determined. In the por- 



