JOSIAH WILLARD GIBBS 43 



borne out by Emil Fischer's researches in structural chemistry, which 

 show that the intrinsic stability of chemical systems is usually such 

 that it can not be disturbed by "intramolecular wobble/' chemical 

 change being brought about by extramolecular or catalytic influences. 

 The mathematical treatment of catalysis gives us a deeper insight into 

 phenomena which no one has as yet succeeded in explaining. " We have 

 not," says Bancroft, "the first suggestion of an adequate theory of 

 catalysis" so essential to a better understanding of chemistry and of 

 life itself. A true theory of catalysis will enable us to solve the prob- 

 lem of the transmutation of the elements, of which we have already 

 had examples in the substances derived from radium, and the recent 

 derivation of tellurium from copper by Sir William Eamsay. The 

 action of animal and vegetable protoplasm is probably catalytic and 

 the chemist can now make some vegetable substances, such as indigo 

 or alizarine, more cheaply and purely than the plants themselves do. 

 Could we substitute inorganic catalyzers for the vegetable enzymes and 

 ferments in all cases, we might, as Bancroft points out, duplicate every- 

 thing except the plant itself. Becently Loeb has interpreted the fact 

 that some eggs can be developed by osmotic pressure alone, while others 

 require fertilization, by the explanation that, in the former class the 

 nuclein synthesis, which is necessary for segmentation, is started within 

 the nucleus as a catalytic process, one of the products of the reac- 

 tion being the catalyzer itself; while eggs requiring fertilization are 

 such that the necessary nuclein synthesis must be started by some 

 external catalytic agency. 102 Again catalysis is the key to the causes 

 and treatment of infectious diseases, the toxins and antitoxins of which 

 are probably colloidal catalytic agents. A few drops of such a colloid 

 as cobra venom will rapidly reduce a living animal body to a definite 

 phase of dissipated energy, as far as its vital activity (or " free en- 

 ergy") is concerned, and such catalysts as colloidal metals, which 

 Bredig has shown to act exactly like the ferments and enzymes, can 

 themselves be " poisoned " or rendered inert by other substances, just 

 as toxins, venoms and poisons can be neutralized by antitoxins or other 

 antidotes. Gibbs did not discuss colloids explicitly, because substances 

 of such indefinite or irregular formation do not admit of mathematical 

 treatment as such, but the physics of what we know of their intimate 

 structure is implicit in his chapters on chemical conditions obtaining 

 at surfaces of discontinuity. Colloids are semi-solid substances, and 

 colloidal solutions are " pseudo-solutions," being suspensions of minute, 

 discrete particles of matter which are not true solutions, in that they 

 obstruct the passage of light, while neither the freezing point nor the 

 vapor tension of the solvent can be sensibly lowered. Graham thought 

 of colloids as dynamic phases of matter, possessing internal energy, while 

 crystalloids are static and inert. The former include reversible colloids 

 like gelatine which, heated with warm water, will upon cooling solidify 

 102 Loeb, Science, 1907, N. S., XXVI., 425-37. 



