434: CHEMISTRY OF THE LEUCOMAINS. 



ulation of blood. The inertness of arginin, it may be added, was 

 first pointed out by Schmiedeberg' in 1896. Matthews has shown 

 that arginin in large amount exerts a distinct retarding effect upon 

 tryptic digestion. 



It has already been pointed out that the protamins precipitate 

 solutions of albumose or pepton and give rise to histon, or at all 

 events to histon-like bodies. Inasmuch as the natural histons show 

 many points of resemblance to the protamins it is quite probable 

 that these substances represent the next higher group of proteids. 

 A brief consideration of the histons in this connection is therefore 

 by no means out of place. 



The first representative of this group was discovered in 1884 by 

 Kossel.^ Inasmuch as Miescher had previously shown that the 

 spermatozoa of the salmon contained a salt-like combination of nu- 

 clein and protamin, the thought suggested itself that a similar com- 

 pound of nuclein and a basic body might be present in the red 

 corpuscles of the blood of geese. On extracting the well washed 

 stroma, perfectly free from hemoglobin, by means of dilute hydro- 

 chloric acid he obtained a pepton-like body to which he gave the 

 name histon. Ten years later Lilienfeld ' showed that the nucleo- 

 histon from the leucocytes of the thymus gland on treatment with dilute 

 hydrochloric acid was split up into nuclein and histon. The latter, 

 although coagulable by heat, he regarded as identical with the histon 

 of Kossel. Very soon thereafter histon was reported to be present 

 in febrile urine (Krehl and Matthes*) and in leukemic urine (Kolisch 

 and Burian"). 



An examination of the spermatozoa of the sea-urchin for protamin 

 by Mathews showed that' these cells contained a compound of nu- 

 clein and of a histon-like body to which he gave the name arhcusln. 

 This interesting observation is substantiated by that of Miescher,^ 

 who first pointed out that the salmon spermatozoa if immature did 

 not contain protamin, but instead a histon-like substance — cUbumi- 

 nose. A similar condition was observed by Bang* in connection 

 with mackerel spermatozoa. These, when matare, as already pointed 

 out, contain the protamin scombrin, but the immature spermatozoa 

 do not contain the substance, but instead a histon, which Bang 

 designates as scombron. Shortly thereafter Kossel and Kutscher* 

 showed that the same was true for the mature spermatozoa of the cod 

 (Gadus morrhua). Ehrstrom^" arrived at a similar result with the 



' Berichie, 29, 355. 



^Zeits. phydoi. Ohem., 8, 511. 



^ Zeits. physiol. Chem., 18, 482, 1894. 



' Archiv. exp. Path. u. Pharm. , 36, 441, 1895. 



^Zeits. Uin. Med., 29, 374, 1896. 



^Zeits. phyml. Ohem., 23, 399, 1897. 



' Archiv. exp. Path. u. Pharm. ,37. 



' ZeUs. physiol. Chem., 27, 466, 1899. 



^Zeits. physiol. Chem., 31, 191, 1900. 



^"Zeits. physiol. Chem., 32, 350, 1901. 



