on the part of the proteids? This curious reversion, may we call it, to a plant-like metabolism in thus compounding with carbon to the rejection of its natural affinities. Is it nervous inco-ordination, or toxic disorganization, or what? Again we seem to be driven back, cancer-like, upon a loquacity of function, upon some misapplied vital energy behind the scenes with which as yet we cannot grapple.
Who till within quite recent times would have thought that a proteid molecule could give birth to sugar?[1] I trust there is no chemist here to-day. To one of decadent age it seems quite a surprising outcome, yet I understand that biochemistry is already quite familiar with it, and regards it as an everyday occurrence, whether in the physiology of plants or animals. And how this must enlarge one’s horizon of the subtlety of energy that lies within the human kiln! The mills of God, the engines of life, are indeed wonderful examples of an indomitably complete performance. They seem able to enforce within the organic confines of the body that extreme atomic disintegration we are now learning to recognize in the inorganic world, and which seems to suggest that even the stability of the primary elements, as they were wont to be called, is not immutable; that our gold, for instance, at some future geological day may lose its caste, and rank as some inferior substance.
Brought under such conditions of continuous performance, no wonder that our reactions are thus delicate and complete: not that we manufacture something out of nothing, as might seem to be the
- ↑ Carbohydrates may be combined and form a constitutional part of the molecule of certain proteid substances—e.g., glucosides such as mucin (Pfeiffer, op. cit., p. 69).
