44 
materials were first presented in a paper entitled “Ueber die kataly- 
tische Wirksamkeit organische Materien und deren Yerbreitung in der 
Pflanzen- und Tliierwelt ( 383 ) in 1863. He calls attention to the fact 
that in 1863 the group of phenomena called by Berzelius “ catalytic 
actions’' w T ere as } T et but very imperfectly understood, especially such 
as are concerned with changes in the composition of organic com- 
pounds brought about by the action of ferments, such as the alcoholic 
fermentation and the conversion of starch into sugar through the 
action of diastase. He was therefore inclined to the opinion that the 
decomposition of hydrogen peroxide into water and common oxygen 
by the action of platinum and similar metals may be regarded as the 
prototype of all catalytic phenomena. Indeed, as he points out in a 
later part of this article, Berzelius had already compared the decom- 
position of hydrogen peroxide by the noble metals to the fermentation 
of grape sugar by yeast. It was therefore with the view of throwing 
still further light on the causes of catalysis in general that these 
studies on the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide by substances of 
animal and vegetable origin were first undertaken. He observed that 
platinum and the noble metals generally rapidly blue a tincture of 
guaiacum containing hydrogen peroxide, and that a certain amount 
of the hydrogen peroxide present is decomposed into water and com- 
mon oxygen. It follows from this that the power of these substances 
to catalyze hydrogen peroxide is so intimately associated with their 
power to blue the tincture of guaiacum containing hydrogen peroxide 
that both properties are referable to the same cause, and it was for 
this reason that a tincture of guaiacum containing small amounts of 
hydrogen peroxide proved to be a valuable reagent in the investigation 
of these phenomena. By means of it he proved that these catalytic 
agents have the widest possible distribution in vegetable and animal 
tissues. Among the substances tested with the guaiacum hydrogen 
peroxide reagent were a number of the common enzymes, such as 
diastase, emulsin, myrosin, rennin, etc., yeast, gluten, and over 100 
species of plants, including certain fungi and molds, and also a number | 
of seeds and substances of animal origin, such as fibrin, red blood 
corpuscles, and saliva. Without exception, all of these substances 
were found by him to actively decompose hydrogen peroxide, and 
with only two exceptions, yeast and rennin, all of them likewise gave 
rise to the production of guaiacum blue. Schoenbein ( 387 ) therefore 
concluded that the power to decompose hydrogen peroxide and to blue 
guaiacum thereby is intimately associated with the specific activity 
of the unorganized ferments and with such vital phenomena as the 
sprouting of seeds, etc., inasmuch as all of these biologic properties 
are lost by heating to 100° C., by exposure to hydrogen sulphide, and 
also, as shown in a later paper ( 385 ), by exposure to hydrocyanic 
acid. 
