CATALASE 77 



Occurrence of Catalase under Normal and Pathological Condi- 

 tions. Battelli and Stern * in one of the most recent studies have 

 found that the catalytic power of the tissues endures many hours 

 after death. Its abundance is different for different organs of the 

 same animal, but remarkably constant for the same organ in the 

 same species. In general the order in decreasing strength is : liver, 

 kidney, blood, spleen, gastro-intestinal mucosa, salivary glands, 

 lung, pancreas, testicle, heart, muscle, brain; but this order 

 varies in different species. In embryos catalase is scanty, but 

 it increases rapidly after birth. Leucocytes contain little, most 

 of that in the blood being in the stroma of the red blood-corpus- 

 cles. The body fluids contain little or none. Acute poisoning 

 by phosphorus or CNH, icterus, and double nephrectomy do 

 not reduce the amount in the tissues ; in chronic phosphorus 

 poisoning the amount of catalase in the degenerated liver is 

 decreased, but it is increased in the other organs. Injected 

 intravenously, catalase (of the liver) is destroyed rapidly, and 

 does not appear in the urine; it does not cause any toxic effects, 

 nor does it increase resistance to poisoning by venoms. The 

 tissues also contain anti-catalases, and still further a substance 

 which protects the catalase from the anti-catalase ; this protec- 

 tive substance is called the philocatalase by Battelli and Stern. 2 

 Jolles and Oppenheimer 3 devised methods for quantitative 

 estimation of the catalase of the blood, and found that it might 

 be considerably reduced in diseases (nephritis, tuberculosis, and 

 carcinoma, but not in diabetes), but the results were quite incon- 

 stant in each condition. Carbon monoxide poisoning did not 

 lower the catalase action, and there is no difference between 

 arterial and venous blood in the amount of catalase. The cata- 

 lase action is independent of the hemoglobin, and it is not re- 

 sponsible for the formation of oxyhemoglobin ; it is much less 

 abundant in amphibia than in man. 



The gas evolved by the action of pus on H 2 O 2 was found by 

 Marshall 4 to be pure oxygen, each c.c. of a certain sample of 

 pus examined liberating 133.9 c.c of gas. The active constit- 

 uent of pus, he states, is contained in the serum and not in the 

 corpuscles. 



Substances decomposing H 2 O 2 have been found also in bac- 

 terial cultures, first by Gottstein, and later in the cell-juices 



1 Archivio di Fisiologia, 1905 (2), 471. This article contains a complete 

 sume of the literature to date (in French). 



* Jour, physiol. et path. ge*n., 1905 (7), 919 and 957. 



3 Virchow's Arch., 1905 (180), 185. 



4 Univ. of Penn. Med. Bull., 1902 (15), 366. 



