THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
FEBRUARY,  1902. 
THE  EVOLUTION  AND  USE  OF  THE  ANIMAL  .DIGEST- 
IVE FERMENTS  IN  MEDlCMEo,.      tS>  / 
«  Ever  since  the  time  '  ferments  and  ferment  action '  have  been 
known,"  says  Oppenheimer  in  his  recent  work  on  the  subject,  "  their 
investigation  has  covered  the  whole  field  of  inquiry  in  all  branches 
of  biology,  because  where  there  is  life  their  manifestations  play  an 
important  role.  All  the  problems  of  animal  and  vegetable  metab- 
olism— in  brief  life — are  in  some  way  related  to  the  province  of  the 
ferments." 
Sir  Michael  Foster  in  his  Lane  Lectures,"  1901,  declares :  "The 
history  of  physiology  can  be  regarded  in  no  other  light  than  as  the 
heart  or  kernel  of  the  history  of  medicine." 
In  attempting  a  review  of  the  immense  labors  elucidating  the 
nature  of  the  ferments  of  digestion,  we  find  ourselves  confronted 
with  a  subject  which,  to  present  with  the  fulness  it  invites,  would 
take  us  far  beyond  permissible  limits.  It  is  therefore  necessary  to 
attempt  simply  a  brief,  clear  and  authentic  (in  so  far  as  possible) 
view  of  the  genesis  of  the  subject  as  it  comes  to  and  concerns  us 
to-day  in  pharmacy  and  medicine. 
Physiology,  as  a  science,  was  evidently  unknown  to  the  ancients ; 
and  when  the  ignorance  concerning  human  anatomy  still  existing 
at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  (Harvey  discovered  the 
circulation  of  the  blood  in  1628)  is  taken  into  consideration,  phys- 
iology in  general,  as  well  as  its  application  to  digestion,  must,  at 
best,  have  been  in  its  infancy  at  this  period. 
It  is  therefore  remarkable  that  the  Belgian  chemist,  Von  Hel- 
ta) 
