Page:Life and death (1911).djvu/195

 *diate principles highest in complexity among those which form the living protoplasm. We must analyze the two components, the albumins and the histones on the one hand, and the nucleins on the other. As for the nucleins, this has already been done, or very nearly so.

Kossel, in fact, decomposed the nuclein by a series of very carefully arranged operations, and has reduced it step by step to its crystallizable organic radicals. At each stage that we descend in the scale of simplification a body appears which is more acid and more rich in phosphorus. At the third stage we come to phosphoric acid itself. The first operation divides the nuclein into two substances: the new albumin and nucleinic acid. After separating these elements they can be reunited: a solution of albumin with a solution of nucleinic acid reconstitutes the nuclein. A second operation separates the nucleinic acid in its turn into three parts. One is a body of the nature of the sugars—i.e., a carbohydrate. The appearance of a sugar in this portion of the molecule of nucleinic acid is an interesting fact and fertile in results. The second part is constituted by a mixture of nitrogenous bodies, well known in organic chemistry under the name of xanthic bases (xanthin, hypo-*xanthin, guanin, and adenin). The third part is a very acid body and full of phosphorus—thymic acid. If in a third and last operation the thymic acid is analyzed, it is finally separated into phosphoric acid and into thymene, a crystallizable base, and thus we are brought back to the physical world, for all these bodies incontestably belong to it.