B.—CHEMISTRY. 37 
to this ideal an exposition to those heroes of the wonder and beauty 
of the world which they already occupy, on the principle that if you 
cannot have what you like, it is elementary wisdom to like what you 
have? In following the customary practice of surveying matters of 
interest which have risen from our recent studies, therefore, it is the 
purpose of this address to emphasise also those esthetic aspects of 
chemistry which offer ample justification for the labour which its 
pursuit involves. 
What is breakfast to the average man? A hurried compromise 
between hunger and the newspaper. How does the chemist regard it? 
As a daily miracle which gains, rather than loses, freshness as the 
years proceed. For just think what happens. Before we reach the 
table frizzled bacon, contemplated or smelt, has actuated a wonderful 
chemical process in our bodies. The work of Pavlov has shown that 
if the dog has been accustomed to feed from a familiar bow] the sight 
of that bowl, even empty, liberates from the appropriate glands a 
saliva having the same chemical composition as that produced by 
snuffing the food. This mouth-watering process, an early experience 
of childhood, is known to the polite physiologist as a ‘ psychic reflex,’ 
and the various forms assumed by psychic reflex, responding to the 
various excitations which arise in the daily life of a human being, 
must be regarded by the chemical philosopher as a series of demon- 
strations akin to those which he makes in the laboratory, but hopelessly 
inimitable with his present mental and material resources. For, 
extending this principle to the other chemical substances poured succes- 
sively into the digestive tract, we have to recognise that the minute 
cells of which our bodies are co-ordinated assemblages possess and 
exercise a power of synthetic achievement contrasted with which the 
classical syntheses, occasionally enticing the modern organic chemist 
to outbursts of pride, are little more than hesitating preliminaries. Such 
products of the laboratory, elegant as they appear to us, represent only 
the fringe of this vast and absorbing subject. Carbohydrates, alkaloids, 
glucosides and purines, complex as they seem when viewed from the 
plane of their constituent elements, are but the molecular debris strewing 
the path of enzyme action and photochemical synthesis, whilst the 
enzymes produced in the cells, and applied by them in their ceaseless 
metamorphoses, are so far from having been synthesised by the chemist 
as to have not even yet been isolated in purified form, although their 
specific actions may be studied in the tissue-extracts containing them. 
Reflect for a moment on the specific actions. The starch in our 
- toast and porridge, the fat in our butter, the proteins in our bacon, all 
insoluble in water, by transformations otherwise unattainable in the 
laboratory are smoothly and rapidly rendered transmissible to the blood, 
which accepts the products of their disintegration with military pre- 
cision. Even more amazing are the consequences. Remarkable as the 
foregoing analyses must appear, we can dimly follow their progress 
by comparison with those more violent disruptions of similar materials 
revealed to us by laboratory practice, enabling such masters of our craft 
_ as Emil Fischer to isolate the resultant individuals. Concurrently with 
stich athalyses, however, there proceed syntheses which we can scarcely 
} 
i 
| 
f 
