Intestinal Auto Intoxication

biological chemistry is too incomplete at the present time. Even when thus limited, the study is still considerable for the researches made during the last years almost exclusively in Germany by Kossel, Fischer and their collaborators, have profoundly modified our previous knowledge of the transformation, which the albuminous molecule undergoes in the digestive tract of man. In order to understand nitrogenous auto-intoxication of microbic origin, it is necessary to have an exact knowledge of the bodies that arise from the disintegration of the albuminous molecule, and to be able to distinguish on the one hand those produced in the digestion by the enzymes, on the other, those produced by microbic putrefaction; for it is only in the latter, that we shall find the toxic bodies capable of causing autointoxication. As the French textbooks are not up to date with the contemporaneous work done upon the chemistry of the albumins; we shall be obliged to fill in the gap, and give a short rteumt of the present status of the question. We shall consider in their order: 1st. The transformation of the albuminous molecule in the digestive tube caused by the enzymes or the microbes. 2d. The non-toxic products derived from the disintegration of the albuminous molecule. 3d. The toxic products derived from its disintegration. I. TRANSFORMATION OF ALBUMIN IN THE INTESTINE The study of the peptic and tryptic digestion of the albuminous molecule, appeared to have b...