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ENZYMES. 45
It is at present impossible to state what part autolytic processes
take in life under physiological conditions, and we can have only con-
jectures on this subject. In the autolysis of a removed organ or of one
through which the blood is not flowing, the conditions in many ways are
quite different from the conditions in life. The products which appear
after weeks or months of autolysis, sometimes in very small quantities,
do not give any clue to the nature of the vital processes, and conclusions
must be drawn very carefully from these results.
For the present it is impossible to judge of the importance of the
enzymes active in autolysis for physiological conditions, but this does
not exclude the possibility that in normal cell life the enzymes play a
very important role. Numerous observations show this to be true, and
we tend more and more toward the view that the chemical transforma-
tions in the living cells are brought about by enzymes, and that these
latter are to be considered as the chemical tools of the cells (Hofmeister
and others. 1
).
From this standpoint the enzymes are of especial interest because
to-day it is the general belief that nearly all chemical processes of great
importance do not occur in the animal fluids, but on the contrary in the
cells, which are the real chemical workshops of the organism. It is also
chiefly the cells, which by their more or less active efficiency regulate
the extent of the chemical processes and thereby also the intensity of
the general metabolism. The folloAving will be given as special examples
of the action of such enzymes under pathological conditions. The
changes of the liver and blood in acute phosphorus intoxication and
in acute yellow atrophy of the liver, where we find, in the urine, the
enzymotic decomposition products of the proteins.2
Another example
is the solution of pneumonic infiltrations by the enzymes of the migrated
and inclosed leucocytes as studied by Fr. Muller,3
and this is at the same
time an example of heterolysis, i.e., of a solution or a destruction in an
organ by enzymes not belonging therein but introduced from without.
An autolysis, although not very marked, occurs in those organs or parts
of organs which have not been normally nourished because of a dis-
turbance in the circulation, and they are gradually consumed by this
action. The part injured undergoes solution, while the healthy part
remains unattacked. By this solvent action as well as by the forma-
tion of bactericidal bodies, as observed by Conradi,4
and of antitoxins
1
F. Hofmeister, Die chemische Organisation der Zelle, Braunschweig, 1901.
2
Jacoby, Zeitschr. f. physiol. Chera., 30, 174 (1900).
3
Verhandl. d. naturforsch. Gesellsch. zu Basel, 1901. See also O. Simon, Deutsch
Arch. f. klin. Med., 1901.
4
Hofmeister’s Beitrage, 1.
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