ADSORPTION AND THE MYELINS 187 



the red corpuscles. It is these properties which favour the 

 action of the erythrocytes as common carriers of the organism. 

 It is not necessary that diffusible bodies become chemically 

 combined with the substance of the red corpuscles ; they may 

 be merely absorbed and easily yielded up when the surroundings 

 become altered. 



Most suggestive of all seems to me the observations of 

 Albrecht and Dietrich and Hegel on the one hand, that the 

 myelin of the cells in autolysis makes its appearance in the 

 cytoplasm coincidently with the loss of the nuclear chromatin — 

 and our own observation, that outside the body it is possible to 

 gain union between oleic acid and nitrogenous bases, such as 

 cholin and neurin. It is true that so far no one has been able 

 to demonstrate the existence of protein-fatty-acid compounds. 

 Briicke, Quincke, and Klotz have all concluded that they must 

 exist. This demonstration of ours of the existence of cholin 

 and neurin oleate is, I would suggest, a step in this direction. 



If fats can be taken into the protein molecule — if the lecithin- 

 like bodies of the nucleus and the cytoplasm exist there normally 

 in intimate association with the protein constituents — then 

 we gain a valuable insight into the most perplexing matter of 

 fatty degeneration. Fats, that is, appearing in fatty degenera- 

 tion and necrobiosis, are not necessarily or entirely due to 

 absorption from the blood and lymph, as Rosenfeld would hold, 

 but some at least are products of the disintegration of the com- 

 plex molecules of living matter. With many workers on auto- 

 lysis we have to recognize a succession of steps from the most 

 highly organized nuclear materials through the myelins to 

 neutral fats, fatty acids, and cholesterin. There is a myelinic 

 preceding the fatty degeneration ; or, more accurately, in true 

 cell degeneration, as distinct from infiltrative processes, the 

 disintegration of the cell substance may well be in two stages, 

 bodies of the myelin type being formed first, and these being 

 followed, with further dissociation, by the appearance of fatty 

 bodies of simpler type. 



