XXII 
THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF IONS. II! 
THE experiments described in this paper are a continua- 
tion of the experiments in my first paper on this subject in 
three directions.” It will be shown by a longer series of 
experiments that the organic acids behave differently from 
the inorganic. While the physiological effects of the latter 
are determined by the concentration of hydrogen ions, this is 
apparently not the case with the fatty acids, inasmuch as the 
degree of dissociation and the physiological effects of the 
fatty acids do not run parallel. We shall not attempt to 
explain this apparent exception until we have further experi- 
mental data at our disposal. We may, however, think of 
the possibility that the fatty acids undergo a partial oxidation 
in the muscle. 
I have shown in my first paper that a muscle does not 
change much in weight in a 0.7 per cent. NaCl solution 
during the first hour, but that it increases greatly in weight 
when only a trace of an acid is added. This increase in 
weight can be explained by assuming that the hydrogen ions 
of the acid act in the muscle hydrolytically like enzymes and 
in this way increase the osmotic pressure in the muscle. 
While the effect of inorganic acids in sufficiently dilute solu- 
tions was quantitatively exactly a function of the number of 
hydrogen ions contained in the unit of volume of the solu- 
tion, no such relation seemed to exist for the organic acids. 
I pointed out that this exceptional behavior from the theory 
of dissociation could be explained through secondary chem- 
ical processes. I have since made a series of experiments with 
1Pfliigers Archiv, Vol. LXXI (1898), p. 457. 
2*On the Physiological Effects of Ions, I,’’ Part II, p. 450. 
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