The soluble ferments and fermentation / J. Reynolds Green.

  • Green, J. Reynolds (Joseph Reynolds), 1848-1914.
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The soluble ferments and fermentation / J. Reynolds Green. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    As soon as we cease to associate fermentation solely with the lowly forms of living organisms, the vitalistic theory of the writers of the school of cle Latour and Pasteur, which makes alcoholic fermentation especially the expression of that life under different conditions of nutrition or aeration, is seen to be no longer sufficient to embrace all the facts. The more recent work takes the subject beyond the stage at which it was left by Pasteur, showing us that precisely similar opera- tions are incidental to the life of the higher organisms. It thus becomes necessary to enquire into the relationship of protoplasm to metabolism, and to the association of ferments or enzymes with the living substance, and so to establish the intimate relationship of fermentation to the ordinary metabolic processes. It becomes possible to go furtlier than this, and to consider by what chemical or physical processes the observed changes or decompositions are effected by protoplasm or by its secretions. The comparatively recent speculations of Emil Fischer upon the configuration of the enzymes and the various bodies they attack, based as they are upon careful and painstaking investigations, direct us towards a new chemical hypothesis of their action, which, while not contravening the views of the vitalistic school of the earlier observers, certainly extends, if it does not complete them. That the work of enzymes will be ultimately shown to be chemical rather than physical in nature is rendered probable by the able researches of Croft Hill, to which attention is called at the conclusion of this work. J. REYNOLDS GREEN. Cambridge, April, 1899.