1883.] Organic Physics. 263 
animals, made by Dr. D. D. Cunningham of India, may be of in- 
terest in this connection. He shows that the result of starvation 
in fungoid plants is principally the conversion of protoplasm into 
fats, it being ultimately all thus converted. Starvation in animals 
causes a rapid increase of fat granules in the cells. These cells 
eventually break up, and discharge their oil globules into the 
blood serum. The change occurs with least rapidity in connective 
tissue cells, and most rapidly in active epithelial and blood cells. 
The protoplasm is converted into oil, at first granules, then glob- 
ules. Then the cells disappear. Finally the intestinal epithelium 
disappears, and nutrition becomes impossible.! 
In old age, when nutrition decreases, fatty degeneration is very 
frequent, This takes place most particularly in the non-vascular 
tissues, But it may effect all the tissues of the body, and even 
the walls of the blood vessels. Fatty metamorphosis always 
Occurs in cases of disproportion between the means of nutrition 
and the parenchyma to be nourished, and may arise either from 
decrease of nutrition or increase of parenchyma. Whena part is, 
from any cause, imperfectly nourished, fatty degeneration always 
occurs.” 
It would seem, then, as if this was one of the normal results of 
animal activity. Oxygen incessantly attacks the tissues, reduces 
their albuminoid molecules, yields animal energy, and leaves fat 
as the general, and other substances as special, results of its 
action. Whether the decline from the albuminoid to the fatty 
Stage of chemical condition is made at a single step, or by several 
__ Successive steps of oxidation, at each of which it may be arrested 
by nutrition, is a question not easily settled. It is very certain, 
however, that a synthetic phase of chemical action opposes, or 
_ Succeeds, this analytic phase. The molecules have been reduced 
chemically by oxidation. They are rebuilt by nutrition. But at 
t stage of reduction the combination with nutrient molecules 
takes place, whether at the fatty, or some earlier stage, is an open’ 
estion, So far as indications go it would appear that proto- 
ae Plasm is directly converted by oxidation into a denitrogenized 
oe compound, Oxidation seems to take away its nitrogen radical, 
and nutrition to replace it. 
*2€ processes of plant activity become of interest in this con- 
1H. : 
’ ope Journal of Microscopical Science, January, 1880. 
Rindfleisch, Manual of Pathological Histology, p. 40. 
