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The credit of having recogHAMBURGER and KOPPE. nized this fact belongs chiefly to These seems to me, are the first to it do with any higher life in the blood. conclusively away investigations, What appears as life in the blood is only a reflection of those true vital processes which go on in the tissues. All known changes which take place in the circulating blood (with the exception of the white blood-corpuscles) are passive physico-chemical reactions, and are in consequence independent of nervous influence.

Experiment has taught us that there exist physiological The vital effects which are attributable solely to ions. property of the ions to keep in solution the widely distributed globulins cannot be replaced by any other be expressed mathematically. Support for this is found in the no longer negligible volume of molecules present in colloidal mixtures which bind the solvent. The water found in gels is, moreover, to be regarded as freely movable only in part, and this part decreases rapidly with an increase in the amount of shrinkage.

His pupil BAUM have studied a long series of narcotics with reference to their distribution coefficient in the above mixture, and have been able to point out a farreaching parallelism between the distribution coefficient of a substance has led and MEYER its to narcotic effect. difference in the distribution of the active substances between the watery tissue fluids and the fatlike constituents of - We will now nerve tissue. leave the field of more or less indirect biochemical investigation and, even though but hastily, Consider the results which have been obtained through ON PHYSICO-CHEMICAL METHODS AND PROBLEMS.