Untersuchungen über Amylose und Amyloseartige Körper

Abstract

THIS pamphlet of about 100 pages is a reprint from the Proceedings of the Heidelberg Association for Natural History and Medicine (vol. vii. part iii.), which is one of the best known of the German scientific societies. It illustrates a tendency, not infrequently seen in Germany, to utilise the pages of a journal for the issue of what is practically a book. The author, Prof. Bütschli, is well known to students of biology for his work on protoplasm, and distant as the subject of starch may at first appear from zoological studies, the present research is a direct outcome of the former. The microscopic investigation of various colloids occurring in nature which led Bütschli to his well-known hypothesis of the foam-like structure of protoplasm caused him later to direct his attention to the formation of starch grains, cellulose membranes and the like in the vegetable world. Some years ago he published his view that starch grains are of the nature of sphæro-crystals. From this he passed on to attempt to prepare starch grains artificially from starch solutions, and he was rewarded by the discovery that, under certain conditions, especially on evaporating a solution containing also 5 per cent, of gelatin, particles differing but slightly from natural starch grains are deposited. These results were criticised by Arthur Meyer, who expressed the opinion that these particles consisted not of starch, but of amylodextrin. The present pamphlet is a reply to these criticisms, and on the ground of various chemical reactions the conclusion is finally reached that Meyer was wrong, and the author right in his original contention.