Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/38

32 ready to our hands, who can say what further discoveries will not shortly be made, even in such well-worked fields as chemistry and physics?

The mention of physical chemistry brings me to what I may term the second head of my discourse, the second striking characteristic of modern chemical physiology: this is the increasing importance which physiologists recognize in a study of inorganic chemistry. The materials of which our bodies are composed are mainly organic compounds, among which the proteids stand out as preeminently important; but every one knows there are many substances of the mineral or inorganic kingdom present in addition. I need hardly mention the importance of water, of the oxygen of the air, and of salts like sodium chloride and calcium phosphate.

The new branch of inorganic chemistry called physical chemistry has given us entirely new ideas of the nature of solutions, and the fact that electrolytes in solution are broken up into their constituent ions is one of fundamental importance. One of the many physiological aspects of this subject is seen in a study of the action of mineral salts in solution on living organisms and parts of organisms. Many years ago Dr. Ringer showed that contractile tissues (heart, cilia, etc.) continue to manifest their activity in certain saline solutions. Howell goes so far as to say, and probably correctly say, that the cause of the rhythmical action of the heart is the presence of these inorganic substances in the blood or lymph which usually bathes it. The subject has more recently been taken up by Loeb and his colleagues at Chicago: they confirm Ringer's original statements, but interpret them now as ionic action. Contractile tissues will not contract in pure solutions of non-electrolytes like sugar or albumin. But different contractile tissues differ in the nature of the ions which are their most favorable stimuli. An optimum salt solution is one in which stimulating ions, like those of sodium, are mixed with a certain small amount of those which like calcium restrain activity. Loeb considers that the ions act because they affect either the physical condition of the colloidal substances (proteid, etc.) in protoplasm or the rapidity of chemical processes.

Amœboid movement, ciliary movement, the contraction of muscle, cell division and karyokinesis all fall into the same category as being mainly dependent on the stimulating action of ions.

Loeb has even gone so far as to consider that the process of fertilization is mainly ionic action; he denies that the nuclein of the male cell is essential, but asserts that all it does is to act as the stimulus in the due adjustment of the proportions of the surrounding ions, and supports this view by numerous experiments on ova in which without the presence of spermatozoa he has produced larvae by merely altering the saline constituents and so the osmotic pressure of the fluid that