Mémoire publié à l'occasion du jubilé de E. Metchnikoff. 
THE ROLE OF LEUCOCYTES IN THE WORK 
ON INTERIY1EDIARY 
IYIETABOLISIYI OF CARBOHYDRATES 
by P. A. LEVENE and G. H. MEYER. 
(From the Rockfeller Institute for Medical Research, New-York, U. S. A.) 
Carbohydrates are undoubtedly the principal source of 
energy required for maintenance of life, particularly for the 
mechanical energy developed within a living organism. 
The final products of combustion of sugar hâve been known 
for a long time. When the carbohydrates molécule is com- 
pletely transformed into Avaler and into carbonic acid gas, it 
lias delivered ali the available energy contained in it to the 
organism. The intermediate phases leading up to the final 
products remained unknown until very recently. True there 
hâve been advanced sortie théories regarding certain phases in 
the process of carbohydrate metabolism Particularly merilo- 
rious are the investigalions of Spiro, Hoppe-Seyler and his 
co-workers, of Embden and co-workers, and especially of Lust 
and Mandel. 
However the methods employed by these investigators were 
not of a nature to justify complété confidence in the conclu¬ 
sions reached by them. 
In order to be acceptable amethod, lias to satisfy at least the 
following requirements ; first, that ail products of the reac¬ 
tion can be quantitalivly analised and second, that the simul- 
taneous interaction of bacteria is completely eliminated. 
The search for such a method led us to think of the phago- 
cytic faculty of ivhite blood cells discovered by professor 
E. Metchnikoff. This faculty is evidently based on the pré¬ 
sence in the leucocyte of a multitude of enzymes. It was 
natural to expect among them also a glycolytic enzyme. By 
