On the Coagulation of the Blood. 



257 



the fact that such a solution becomes slimy when the proportion of 

 salt is increased to 5 per cent. It is also slightly soluble in the sodium 

 sulphate solution used. When this proteid is suspended in water or 

 salt solution the mucus-like strings shrink at about 50° C, and can be 

 easily filtered off. In the case of sodium sulphate extracts of the 

 glands, it is apparently carried down with the globulin that coagulates 

 at that temperature. Saturation with neutral salts, sodium chloride, 

 magnesium sulphate, and especially ammonium sulphate, causes also 

 shrinkage of the swollen masses, and renders filtration easier. It is 

 precipitable by absolute alcohol, basic lead acetate, and by solution of 

 tannin. It is precipitated by acetic acid in strings like mucin ; like 

 mucin also it is soluble in baryta or lime-water, from which solution 

 it is again precipitable by acetic acid, and only soluble in considerable 

 excess of that reagent. 



This substance, however, is not mucin, as prolonged boiling with 

 sulphuric acid does not cause it to yield any reducing sugar. It is 

 also not nuclein of which the cell nuclei are made up, as the nuclei 

 are not attacked by such reagents as \ per cent, sodinm chloride in 

 which this substance is slightly soluble. It, however, like nuclein, 

 yields an ash which is rich in phosphorus ; it dissolves in 0*2 per cent, 

 hydrochloric acid, and on adding pepsin to this solution an insoluble 

 residue rich in phosphorus separates out. Otherwise this substance 

 has the nature of a globulin, but one which is much more readily 

 precipitated by neutral salts than most globulins are ; a proportion of 

 5 per cent, of sodium chloride for instance in its solutions rendering 

 it insoluble ; but the precipitate so produced is not of the usual fine 

 flocculent character, but a slimy mucus-like one. In all these points 

 this proteid resembles in its characters a class of proteids which have 

 been recently named " nucleo-albumins " by Hammarsten.* He has 

 separated these mucin-like globulins from the bile, and from synovial 

 fluid where they have long been mistaken for mucin, and from the 

 cells of the submaxillary gland, which contain, however, true mucin 

 in addition. 



2. The Globulins. — There is a small quantity of a globulin which 

 enters into the condition of a heat coagulum at about 50° C. The 

 most abundant globulin is, however, one which resembles serum 

 globulin in its heat coagulation temperature (75° C), and in the way 

 in which it is precipitated by saturation with salts, or by dialysing out 

 the salts from its solutions. 



The term serum globulin is hardly applicable to a proteid existing 

 in lymph cells ; hence it is necessary to multiply terms, and to desig- 

 nate this globulin by a new name, viz.,' cell globulin. It has, more- 

 over, certain characteristic properties which will be fully dealt with 

 later on. 



* ' Zeitschr. Physiol. Chem.,' vol. 12, p. 163. 



