SCIENCE 



Friday, July 27, 1917 



CONTENTS 

 Acidosis: Professor L. J. Henderson 73 



Scientific Events: — 

 The Iron Industry; Meteorology and Aero- 

 nautical Engineering ; Western Agronomic 

 Workers; The Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal. 83 



Scientific Notes and News 86 



University and Educational News 87 



Discussion and Correspondence: — 



Man and the Anthropoids: Mattoon M. 

 Curtis. Girdling of Bean Stems caused by 

 Bad. phaseoli: 3. H. Muncie 88 



Quotations : — 

 Science and Industry 89 



Scientific Books: — 



Tuttle on the Theory of Measurements: 

 Professor A. deforest Paimer 89 



Special Articles: — 

 Lithologic Evidence of Climatic Pulsations: 

 C. E. Vail 90 



The EaTisas City Meeting of the American 

 Chemical Society 94 



MS3. Intended for publication and books, etc., Intended for 

 review should be sent to Professor J. McKeen Cattell, Garrison- 

 OQ-Hudsuu, N. y 



ACIDOSIS 1 

 I 



For many years students of metabolism, 

 of general physiology and of pathology 

 have been investigating various aspects of 

 the acid-base equilibrium of the body, al- 

 ways with an eye to the problem of acidosis, 

 but at first with small success in unifying 

 our knowledge of that complex subject. 

 Successively it has been shown that in 

 acidosis there may be a production of ^-oxy- 

 butyric acid or some other specific defect 

 of metabolism, an increase of the urinary 

 ammonia, a diminution of the total car- 

 bonic acid of the blood, and of the blood's 

 bicarbonate, an increase of its concentra- 

 tion in hydrogen ions, a diminution in the 

 concentration of carbon dioxide in the al- 

 veolar air and of the free carbonic acid in 

 the blood, an impairment of the affinity of 

 the red corpuscles for oxygen, and a deple- 

 tion of the alkali reserves of the body. Not 

 all of these changes, however, are invariably 

 present, and much confusion has resulted 

 from the attempt to distinguish essential or 

 primary phenomena. 



At length it has become clear that acido- 

 sis is, from the standpoint of physical sci- 

 ence, no simple and unitary state or proc- 

 ess, but that, like metabolism or respira- 

 tion, its unity is biological or functional, 

 and that it consists in any disturbance, 

 large enough and so long enduring as to be 

 properly called pathological, of the regula- 

 tion of alkalinity in the body. TMiat are 

 the disturbances to which this regulatory 

 process is liable? They are such as are 

 made possible by its normal and essential 

 1 The Samuel D. Gross lecture, 1916. 



