366 REPORT— 1888. 



association is an exceedingly close one ; none of the methods adopted for 

 preparing the globulin pnre separate it from the ferment. Until some 

 method is shown by which any substance can be separated into two, we 

 are not justified in saying that it is other than a single substance. 

 Certain facts, however, of which the two most important are the action 

 of alcohol and the action of heat, go far to prove that the ferment is the 

 proteid. 



The action of alcohol. — The ferment is precipitated by alcohol ; and it 

 is generally stated that, unlike proteids, it is not rendered subse- 

 quently insoluble in water by the prolonged action of alcohol. It is this 

 fact upon which Schmidt bases his method of preparing the ferment, 

 viz., extracting with water the dried alcoholic precipitate of serum. 

 Hammarsten, however, has noticed the loss of activity which the ferment 

 undergoes after exposure to the action of alcohol ; and in the present 

 research it was found that an exposui-e of the ferment to the action of 

 alcohol for six to seven months renders it absolutely inactive. The fer- 

 ment is thus, like proteids, rendered ultimately insoluble by alcohol, though 

 more slowly than ordinary albumin is. 



The action of heat. — The most striking fact that goes to prove the 

 identity of the ferment and proteid is that the activity of the ferment 

 is abolished at the same temperature as that at which the distinctive 

 characters of the proteid are destroyed (about 75° C). 



Granting that the ferment is a proteid, it is undoubtedly a globulin : 

 it is insoluble in distilled water, as Gamgee first pointed out when he 

 prepared it from what was termed by Buchanan ' washed blood-clot.' 

 The apparent solubility in Avater of the ferment prepared by Schmidt's 

 method is due to the fact that a portion of the salts in the ferment 

 powder enters into solution at the same time. If the ferment powder be 

 first subjected to prolonged washing with distilled water, and finally to 

 dialysis to remove the salts, a watery extract has then little or no ferment 

 action, while a saline extract has powerful ferment properties. The fer- 

 ment action of such a solution is lessened but not destroyed by dialysis : 

 this is apparently due to the fact that even prolonged dialysis is never 

 sufficient to precipitate all the globulin in a solution. 



The proteids of the cells of the thymus gland. — This gland is a 

 structure which histologically is very similar to lymphatic glands. I 

 have made a few experiments with the object of determining whether the 

 resemblance is borne out from a chemical point of view also. 



My observations under this head will be of a preliminary nature only, 

 as the experiments are not at present completed. The chief points I have 

 made out are the two following : — 



1. That the greater part of the cell-protoplasm is made up of a nucleo- 

 albumin with properties similar to those already described. 



2. That a globulin coagulating at 75° C. is the next most abundant 

 proteid present. This has fibrino-plastic properties exactly similar to 

 those already described as belonging to the cell-globulin derived from the 

 lymphatic glands. 



