Page:Defensive Ferments of the Animal Organism (3rd edition).djvu/103

 following quantities of serum and cane sugar solution:—

These results, without our knowing it, confirmed experiments which Weinland had made before us. He had already been able to show that the blood plasma of a dog is able to split up cane sugar; that is to say, it contains invertin as soon as cane sugar is parenterally introduced. These experiments were then later extended to other kinds of sugar, and especially to milk sugar. It was possible to show that the latter also undergoes alteration, but it seems that here, alongside of a hydrolysis, a decomposition takes place in another direction.

Very extraordinary is the observation that, after the introduction of soluble starch, and also of milk sugar, the blood plasma or serum is able to decompose