Abstract
(1) LIKE Prof. Fischer's earlier studies on œdema and nephritis, this work on fatty degeneration and allied topics is suggestive and stimulating, but unsatisfactory. As before, we have, in the first place, a study of phenomena produced in vitro, in this case on the formation of various types of emulsion and. on the factors leading to their stabilisation or “breaking.” The observations are of no particular novelty, but they are well arranged from the point of view of popular demonstration. Passing to the condition in which fat is held in the protoplasm of the normal cell, and of that which has become the subject of fatty degeneration, the authors emphasise, with justice, the fact that the latter may contain actually no more fat than the former. This consideration gives an opening to Prof. Fischer's predilection for facile analogy. The comparison between the appearance in obvious droplets of fat previously invisible, and the “breaking” of a fine emulsion, is obvious and suggestive. But the recognition of a superficial similarity is a long way from a scientific demonstration of identity. On the authors' own showing, it is difficult to see why the post-mortem development of acidity, which is o far in excess of any which can occur during life, does not produce the appearance of extreme fatty infiltration in every cell submitted to histological examination.
(1) Fats and Fatty Degeneration: A Physico-Chemical Study of Emulsions and the Normal and Abnormal Distribution of Fat in Protoplasm.
By Prof. Martin H. Fischer Dr. Marian O. Hooker. Pp. ix + 155. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.; London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1917.) Price 9s. 6d. net.
(2) Practical Physiological Chemistry.
By Sydney W. Cole. Fifth edition. With an introduction by Prof. F. G. Hopkins. Pp. xvi + 401. (Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons, Ltd.; London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, and Co., Ltd., 1919.) Price 15s. net.
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D., H. (1) Fats and Fatty Degeneration: A Physico-Chemical Study of Emulsions and the Normal and Abnormal Distribution of Fat in Protoplasm (2) Practical Physiological Chemistry. Nature 103, 504 (1919). https://doi.org/10.1038/103504a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/103504a0