On chemical changes in their relation to micro-organisms / E. Frankland.

  • Frankland, Edward, 1825-1899.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On chemical changes in their relation to micro-organisms / E. Frankland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [^Reprinted from, the Journal of the Chemical Society, April, 1885. Vol. XLVII.] y t -v.‘ ON CHEMICAL tJHANGES 1n THEIR RELATION TO MICRO-ORGANISMS. E. Feankland, D.C.L., M.D., LL.D., F.R.S. [A Lecttire delivered before the Chemical Society on Thursday, February 5.] In addition to analytical and synthetical changes in chemical compo- sition depending upon heat, light, and electricity, there are two well recognised kinds of chemical action, viz.:— 1. Chemical change effected in each of two or more substances brought into contact with each other; and, 2. Chemical change effected by contact with a substance which itself suffers apparently no alteration. Failing any satisfactory expla- nation, very heterogeneous changes of the latter kind have been grouped together under the designation of “ catalytic actions,” but a careful study of many of the reactions of this second class has trans- ferred them to the first, and it is more than probable that the remainder, when better known, will be similarly disposed of. The chemical changes occurring in animal and vegetable organisms were, until recently, tacitly, if not formally, relegated to the second type. The plant or animal was regarded either as effecting the changes by mere contact, or by some mysterious process outside the ken of experimental inquiry. This illusion has been finally dispelled by the synthetical operations of organic chemistry, which have taught us how to pro- duce, by purely laboratory processes, numerous compounds formerly obtainable only as the products of living organisms, and it is to be hoped that chemists and biologists will now give more attention to this hitherto neglected field of chemical action—the chemical changes which occur in animal and vegetable organisms. In studying the present aspect of this subject, I have found it neither desirable nor possible to draw any sharp line of demarcation between living beings of the highest type and the micro-organisms to which my remarks must be chiefly directed; in the first place, because I do not find any essential difference between the chemical changes which occur in man and the mammalia, for instance, and b