XXVII 
ON ION-PROTEID COMPOUNDS AND THEIR ROLE IN 
THE MECHANICS OF LIFE-PHENOMENA.—THE 
POISONOUS CHARACTER OF A PURE NaCl SOLU- 
TION’ 
I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON ION-PROTEID COMPOUNDS 
In this series of articles I intend to publish some new 
facts and ideas concerning the constitution of living matter, 
and to apply these facts to a number of life-phenomena. 
The new facts concerning the constitution of living matter 
are chiefly as follows: The salts or electrolytes in general do 
not exist in living tissues as such exclusively, but are partly 
in combination with proteids. The salt or electrolyte mol- 
ecules do not enter into this combination as a whole, but 
through theirions. The great importance of these ion-proteid 
compounds lies in the fact that by the substitution of one 
ion for another the physical properties of the proteid com- 
pounds change (for instance, their power to absorb water 
and their state of matter). We thus possess in these ion- 
proteid compounds essential constituents of living matter 
which can be modified at desire, and hence enable us to vary 
and control the life-phenomena themselves. 
By making experiments on the effects of ions upon the 
absorption of water by muscle I found that a muscle does 
not take up the same amount of water in equimolecular 
solutions of various chlorides.? The differences were very 
striking. While in a 0.7 per cent. NaCl solution the muscle 
absorbed about 7 per cent. of its own weight of water within 
eighteen hours, it absorbed about 40-50 per cent. of its 
1 American Journal of Physiology, Vol. IIT (1900), p. 327. 
2 Part IT, p. 510. 
544 
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