The soluble ferments and fermentation.

  • Green, J. Reynolds (Joseph Reynolds), 1848-1914.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The soluble ferments and fermentation. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    be no longer sufficient to embrace all the facts. The more recent work takes the subject beyond the stage at which it was left by Pasteur, showing us that precisely similar opera- tions are incidental to the life of the higher organisms. It thus becomes necessary to enquire into the relationship of protoplasm to metabolism, and to the association of ferments or enzymes with the living substance, and so to establish the intimate relationship of fermentation to the ordinary metabolic processes. It becomes possible to go further than this, and to consider by what chemical or physical processes the observed changes or decompositions are effected by protoplasm or by its secretions. The comparatively recent speculations of Emil Fischer upon the configuration of the enzymes and the various bodies they attack, based as they are upon careful and painstaking investigations, direct us towards a new chemical hypothesis of their action, which, while not contravening the views of the vitalistic school of the earlier observers, certainly extends, if it does not complete them. That the work of enzymes will be ultimately shown to be chemical rather than physical in nature is rendered probable by the able researches of Croft Hill, to which attention is called at the conclusion of this work. J. REYNOLDS GREEN. Cambridge, April, 1899. EDITORIAL NOTE. Professor J. Reynolds Green diflfers from me as to the advisability of adding an Index to the present volume. The scheme of the Cambridge Natural Science Manuals includes an Index and I have therefore caused one to be made, I wish to state however that Professor Green has no responsibility for this part of the book, which would no doubt have been much better had the Author seen his way to prepare it. Names of Authors are omitted from the Index but full reference to them will be found in the Bibliography. A. E. S. May 17, 1899.