1885.] creatine and urea in muscular tissue. 259 



(ii) By converting etliene alcohol or glycol into a cyanhydrin 

 and boiling with acids or alkalis — 



| '" +HC1 = H 2 + CH 2 (!; H * 0H 

 CH 2 .OH ,U 



glycol chlovhydrin 



CH„ (^ • ° H + KCN = KC1 + CH j^ 0H 



2 (CI 2 (ON 



cyanhydrin 



ethene lactic acid 



In a paper printed in the Cambridge Philosophical Proceedings, 

 in 1882, 1 endeavoured to show that albumen misdit be regarded as 

 a compound of cyanhydrins or cyan-alcohols, bodies having the 



(TJf) 



composition generally of R...CH i pl>J ; and I showed how by com- 

 bining these cyan-alcohols together in certain proportions a com- 

 pound might be obtained having very nearly the same composition 

 as that given by Schiitzenberger for albumen. The combination of 



{OTT 

 p ¥ which I suggested gave with 



H 2 S0 3 the compound 



I ON' 



= CL H, N O S 



(wi^^PX^PXH^M^MS)^ 



133 



three molecules of this undergoing condensation giving as the com- 

 position of albumen 



C 240 H M9 N 63 O 7 5 S 3 



albumen 



which differs from Schiitzenberger's formula, C 240 H 3g7 N 65 O 75 S 3 -j- 3 only 

 in the small amounts of hydrogen and nitrogen. 



Now I did not suggest that this was anything more than an 

 approximation to the constitution of albumen, in fact I would 

 modify it materially now, as I shall show directly ; but the more 

 the subject is considered the more evident does it become that the 

 fundamental point with which I started (viz. that the cyan-alcohols 

 are the bodies from which this complex molecule is built up) — is 

 the key, not only to the constitution of that body but to the 

 changes which it undergoes both in the system and after death. 



* Fownes, Manual of Chemistry, 1877, p. 319. 

 t Annates dc Chimie, 1879, p. 384. 



