A text-book of pathology for students of medicine / by J. George Adami and John McCrae ; illustrated with 304 engravings and 11 colored plates.

  • Adami, J. George (John George), 1862-1926.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A text-book of pathology for students of medicine / by J. George Adami and John McCrae ; illustrated with 304 engravings and 11 colored plates. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    utilization and synthesis of fats; lipolytic and fat-forming ferments have been isolated and designated lipases. Do proteins give origin to fats or fatty acids? They probably do to a slight extent, but at present it appears as if the fats of the body are almost entirely the fats of the food. Here it is necessary to mention the lecithins, which are almost constant constituents of the animal cell, and form a considerable factor in nerve cells and in the cells of egg yolk. They have a fatty portion indicating a relationship with fats; they are nitrogenous suggesting relationship with the proteins; and they are richly phosphorized. The last two facts suggest that they are cleavage products of the nucleins, or combinations of such cleavage products with fats. Parallel to the lecithins as protein-fat compounds are the glycoproteins—or protein-carbohydrate compounds—chief of which are the mucins. These are to be seen in the cell as globules of mucinogen, which by imbibition of water become mucins. They are modified, largely inert, proteins; among them are gelatin, elastin, chondrin, amyloid, and mucin, which are poor in carbon and rich in oxygen, and yield on dissociation carbohydrates. A few other albumin- oid materials occurring in and outside the cell are to be mentioned: such are the products of dissociation of hemoglobin, such as hematin, together with melanin, the pigment of the skin and hair, which recent observations indicate are allied to the lipochromes, compounds of lipoids with protein derivatives; these will be discussed with the infiltrations and degenerations. GROWTH In all our previous considerations of the biophore we have dealt with metabolic activity, but 'we have made only passing reference to growth. If we think a little it will be seen that the growth of living matter demands a process whereby two molecules exist where there was one before. Our conception of the biophore is as a ring, or a ring of rings, and growth occurs by increase first of the individual smaller groups or rings. These groups, from their very inception present a series of unsatisfied affinities, and each or any of the molecules is con- stantly attracting molecules of a like order, and on the first of these is built up a second and a third until the group is complete. Along these lines we can imagine the development of a new ring of which each individual component is the reflection of the components of the original ring: in its turn this ring attracts, and so builds up other rings in due order until eventually there is produced a completed compound molecule, reproducing the parent molecule. We use the illustration of the ring to indicate a degree of completeness; the ring can break, it is true, and in its repair, be enlarged or be made smaller, or it can join with another broken one, but the molecules of the formed ring are less likely to be attracted away just because they are in a ring, i. e., in a state of relative completeness.