198 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
as long as it is applied, so long will the organ live ; indefinitely, 
in fact, if the proper conditions he observed for a sufficiently long 
time. But as examples of katabolic inertia I would include all 
cases of organs isolated from all nervous and vascular connec- 
tions, surviving by reason of the perfusion of salt solution. Here 
no ‘food’ is introduced, the HaCl is powerless to prolong life 
indefinitely — no longer than the time when the katabolic inertia 
of the protoplasm shall have been spent. 
Of course organs and tissues still in situ in the dead body can 
exhibit their katabolic inertia ; examples are numerous — e.g ., the 
respiratory centres emitting impulses even after the animal’s 
evisceration (marmot, Marckwald), the post-mortem continuation of 
intestinal peristalsis, post-mortem parturition (uterine katabolic 
inertia), the nerves remaining excitable three to four days after 
severance from the central nervous system, the growth of hairs, and 
all cases of local cell-life after death — spermatozoa in the vesiculse 
seminales, cilia in trachea, etc., and amoeboid leucocytes generally. 
All cases of post-mortem bio-chemical change are illustrations of 
katabolic inertia, e.g., the excised liver continuing to convert 
glycogen to dextrose, the isolated and bloodless muscle expiring 
C0 2 even in N or H, the tissues continuing to produce heat, to 
reduce deoxidisable material brought into contact with them, and 
the post-mortem formation of enzymes generally, the salivary glands 
secreting on nerve-stimulation in decapitated animals. By its 
katabolic inertia an organism ‘ lives ’ until it dies when deprived 
of oxygen, water or food. Examples from Pathology can be 
given : the ‘ mo ibid ’ tendencies to deposit fat or to produce sugar 
(Diabetes) in spite of all drugs, etc., are due to protoplasmic inertia ; 
and Professor Adami finds the principle of this inertia under- 
lying the perverted ‘habit of growth’ in cancer cells.* 
Examples of Anabolic Inertia are as follows : — The latent period 
of contraction of muscle ; post-stimulant latent period after splanch- 
nic inhibition of intestine, and after cardio-inhibition ; latent period 
of secreto-motor effects, of photo-mechanical effects on cilia. Under 
physiological insusceptibility we have such cases as the need for a 
series of repeated stimuli before certain reflexes are produced, the 
lengthening of the reaction-time (‘ personal equation ’) in persons of 
* Brit. Med. Jour., 16th March 1901, pp. 624, 626. 
