284 BACTERIAL POISONS. 



leucocythsemic patients ; its occurrence in this disease will 

 be readily understood when it is remembered that leucocy- 

 thsemia is characterized by the presence in the blood of an 

 unusual proportion of the nucleated white blood-corpuscles, 

 which, owing to various unfavorable conditions, become de- 

 stroyed in time, and the contained nuclein, as a result, 

 splits up into adenine and guanine. These two bases may, 

 therefore, be expected in all pathological conditions where 

 there is an abnormal accumulation of pus. Indeed, as early 

 as 1865, Naunyn extracted from pus, obtained from the 

 pleural cavity, a considerable quantity of a substance 

 which was probably either adenine or guanine, or both. 

 Adenine does not occur, or only in minute traces, in meat 

 extract ; and in this it resembles guanine, which is present 

 only in traces. This may be due to the fact that adenine 

 and guanine are readily converted into hypoxanthine and 

 xanthine respectively, as has been shown in the putrefaction 

 experiments of Schindler. They may be considered as 

 transitional products of cell-metabolism, the imido group 

 contained in each readily being replaced by oxygen, and 

 giving rise to ammonia, and this in turn to urea. KosSEL, 

 however, explains this fact on the ground that the muscle 

 tissue is very poor in nucleated cells, i. e., in nuclein. It 

 would seem that the muscle cell in losing the morphological 

 character of a cell has also suffered a corresponding loss in 

 its chemical properties. For while the decomposition- 

 products of nuclein — hypoxanthine, xanthine, phosphoric 

 acid, etc. — are found in the muscle tissue, they do not exist 

 in combination as they do in the nuclein molecules. This is 

 seen in the fact that the bases exist in the free condition, 

 since they can be extracted by water ; and again, the phos- 

 phoric acid is present in the muscle tissue, not in organic 

 combination, but as a salt. In the nucleated cell, adenine, 

 guanine, etc., do not exist in the free condition, but form, 

 in part at least, with albumin and phosphoric acid, a loose 

 combination which is readily decomposed by the action of 

 acids at the boiling temperature. This same change takes 

 place spontaneously after death. 



There can be no doubt that adenine and guanine play an 



