July 15, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



79 



that the theory of muscle being the only seat 

 of so-called motor fatigue is yet without proof. 

 The early experiments of Mosso and of other 

 investigators do not clearly establish a nervous 

 fatigue, but results in these, and certain later 

 experiments may be explained in either vcay, 

 namely, that there is nervous fatigue or that 

 there is only muscular fatigue. There is, in- 

 deed, as much reason to say that there is a 

 widening of the synapses in fatigue as in sleep 

 (see above). 



Such a book has long been needed both by 

 psychologists and by physiologists. Material 

 has been carefully chosen from psychological, 

 physiological and clinical literature, and 

 theory has been properly subordinated to fact. 

 Shepheed Ivory Fr.^nz. 



McLean Hospital, 

 Wavekley, Mass. 



SOCIETIES AKD ACADEMIES. 



SOCIETY FOR EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY AND 



MEDICINE. 



The seventh regular meeting of the society 

 was held on Wednesday, May 18, at 8 :30 p.m., 

 in the physiological laboratory of the New 

 York University and Bellevue Hospital Medi- 

 cal College at 338 East 26th Street. Dr. 

 S. J. Meltzer presided. 



Members present. — Adler, Burton-Opitz, 

 Dunham, Ewing, Gies, Jackson, Levene, Lusk, 

 Meltzer, Murlin, Richards, Salant, Wads- 

 worth, Wallace, Yatsu. 



Members elected. — ^P. B. Hawk, W. G. Mac- 

 Callum, A. R. Mandel, R. M. Pearce, Franz 

 Pfaff, William Salant, H. U. Williams, A. S. 

 Warthin. 



ABSTRACT OP REPORTS ON ORIGINAL 

 INVESTIGATIONS.* 



The Lecithin Content of Fatty Extracts from 

 the Kidney {Preliminary Report) : E. K. 

 Dunham. 



Rosenfeld has shown that the percentage of 

 the alcohol-chloroform extracts from the dried 

 kidneys of dogs, both normal and ' fatty,' 

 fluctuates within very narrow limits. He calls 



* The authors of the reports have furnished the 

 abstracts. The secretary has made only a few 

 abbreviations and minor alterations in them. 



these extracts ' fat,' and regards the micro- 

 scopical examination as entirely untrust- 

 worthy for gauging the amount of fat in the 

 kidney. His work on other organs has led 

 him to the conclusion that, when the fat con- 

 tent is increased in the cells, it has been trans- 

 ported from the fat-depots of the body. It 

 appeared to the author of interest to compare 

 the extracts obtained from the kidney by 

 Rosenfeld's method with similar extracts from 

 the depot-fats. It was at once evident that 

 they differed markedly in the percentage of 

 phosphorus they contained, as is shown by 

 the following analytic results. 



Percentage 

 Alcohol-chloroform Extracts. of 



Phosphorus. 



Human kidney (mean of 28 analyses) 1.3849 



Panniculus adiposus (4 2288 grams) 0.0026 



Perinephritic fat (5.6750 grams) 0.0069 



The extract from the kidney contains from 

 200 to 500 times as much phosphorus as the 

 extract from depot-fat. These facts suffice 

 to show that the two extracts are not directly 

 comparable, and to throw doubt upon the idea 

 advanced by Rosenfeld that the fat in ' fatty ' 

 organs is a simple infiltration from the depots 

 of the body. 



The phosphorus in these extracts was found 

 to be wholly organic in character. Protagon 

 could not be detected even in 400 grams of 

 the tissue. The quantity of jecorin that may 

 have been present was too small to influence 

 materially the analytical results. The most 

 probable compounds containing the phosphorus 

 are forms of lecithin. The barium hydroxide- 

 platinic chloride method for the separation of 

 cholin was employed with the following re- 

 sults : 



Before incineration, in the first case, the 

 platinum salt in the crucible weighed 0.2009 



