Albuminoid

“ If albumin is ever produced by synthesis in the laboratory it will probably be dead albumin. All living organisms contain albumin; this is probably due to the fact that albuminoid matter is particularly adapted for the formation of osmotic membranes. Our osmotic productions are composed of the same elements as those which constitute living beings; an osmotic growth obtained by sowing calcium nitrate in a solution of potassium carbonate with sodium phosphate and sulphate contains all the principal elements of a living organism, viz. carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus. ”

“ Albuminoids,—commonly described as flesh-formers, are also found to some extent in nearly all vegetables. Gluten in flour, fibrin in all cereals, nitrogen in some form in every plant that grows—these all supply flesh-formers in different quantities. Vegetarians never recommend, and seldom practice, the habit of eating very white bread, and so get more flesh-formers by that channel than all the rest of the world. But the great stand-by is in the pulses—beans, peas and lentils—which are richer in albuminoids than any food that is known. ”

“ It has been assumed, however, by those who maintain that the fat of the fattening animal is formed from albuminoids, that the fat of milk must be formed in the same way. Disallowing the legitimacy of such a deduction, there do, nevertheless, seem to be reasons for supposing that the fat of milk may, at any rate in large proportion, be derived from albuminoids. ”

“ The principal degenerations affecting the kidney are the fatty and the albuminoid. Fatty degeneration often reaches a high degree in alcoholics, where fatty degeneration of the heart and liver are also present. Albuminoid disease is frequently associated with some varieties of Bright’s disease, and is also seen as a result of chronic bone disease, or of long-continued suppuration involving other parts of the body, or of syphilis. ”

“ Nothing that lives and grows is without nitrogen, and so we find it in large or small amounts in all plants as well as all animals. Our supplies of albuminoids, or flesh-formers, are obtained from lean meat, fish, poultry, game, as milk curd or cheese, eggs, gluten in flour, fibrine in oats, and in beans, peas and lentils. Albumen is found in many other foods besides eggs. The blood of many animals contains it, and we have presently to speak of albumen in meat. In most vegetable juices and in many seeds and nuts we find it also. ”

“ The substances which form the most offensive part of the soluble vegetable matter are albuminous in character, and the chemical effect on the water is to increase the amount of what is called "albuminoid ammonia." ”

“ Vegetable albumen being of a very unstable nature, is partly again decomposed into amides and sugar, and, while the latter is used in accomplishing the structure of the plant by changing into cellulose, the amide is again transformed into albuminoid, and by decomposition reduced to amides. Thus, by continually assimilating carbonic acid and water, combining with them to form albuminoids, and giving them off again as sugar, the amides act a prominent part in the development of plants. ”

“ To sum up, we see that, whether from food or from sea-water, calcium sulphate will tend to pass but little into solution in the albuminoid substances of the body: calcium carbonate will enter more freely, but a considerable part of it will tend to remain in solution: while calcium phosphate will pass into solution in considerable amount, but will be almost wholly precipitated again, as the albumin becomes broken down in the normal process of metabolism. ”

“ The granular, colourless, sac-shaped albumen encloses a horny endosperm, in which the embryo is inserted the projecting radicle being directed towards the hilum. The cells of the albumen have the form of elongated polyhedra, almost entirely filled with very small starch granules. Besides them, there occur in most of the cells, somewhat larger masses of albuminoid matter having a rhombohedric form, distinctly observable when thin slices of the seed are examined under almond oil in polarized light. ”

“ Albuminoids is the anatomical name given to albuminous substances forming the connective tissues. Chemically they resemble the albumins, being split up by acids or ferments into albumoses, peptones and amino-acids, forming salts, and giving the same colour reactions. They are quite insoluble in water and in salt solutions, and difficultly soluble in dilute acids and alkalies. Typical albuminoids are gelatin, keratin, elastin, fibroin, spongin and conchiolin. ”

“ Protoplasm, called by Huxley the basis of physical life, is nothing more than a homogeneous albuminous matter. An isolated albuminoid is not living any more than an acid or a base equally isolated is a chemically active body. But a mixture of two or several albuminous substances (a protoplasm contains at least two) might be living, similarly as a mixture of an acid and a base demonstrates the chemical activity of the two bodies. But, whereas in the combination of an acid and a base, the formation of a new body puts an end to the dynamic manifestations of the mixture ”

“ The greater the amount of nitrogenous organic impurities, the higher the albuminoid ammonia. A good drinking water ought not to contain more than 0.10 part per million of albuminoid ammonia. An abnormal quantity of chlorine indicates surface drainage or sewage contamination, or an excess of alkaline matter, as common salt. Nitrites should not be present, as they are generally associated with matter not completely oxidized. Nitrites are usually considered more objectionable than nitrates ”

“ The albuminoids and gelatinoids, classed together as proteids, are the most important constituents of food, because they alone can supply the nitrogenous material necessary for the formation of the body tissues. For this purpose, the albuminoids are most valuable. Both groups of compounds, however, supply the body with energy, and the gelatinoids in being thus utilized protect the albuminoids from consumption for this purpose. When their supply in the food is in excess of the needs of the body, the surplus proteids may be converted into body fat and stored. ”

“ They all contain nitrogen. Explosives which are a chemical means of storing tremendous amounts of energy, are mostly of some nitrogenous compound. Albumen is an organic compound of great importance in life, which, besides being the characteristic ingredient in the white of an egg, abounds in the serum of the blood and forms an important part of the muscles and brain. Albuminoids play the most vital rôle in plant life and are an extensive class of organic bodies found in plants and animals, as they are found to form the chief constituents of blood, nerves. ”

“ Thus the albuminoids cannot undergo the wonderful vitalizing process necessary to fit them to enter into and form part of the living body, except an adequate quantity of fatty matter be present to assist in the vital transformation. On the other hand, the assistance of the albuminoids is equally necessary to enable the fatty and saccharine foods to maintain the internal heat of the body. Of all fatty matters, whether derived from the animal or vegetable kingdom, none possesses the property of stimulating and perfecting the nutritive processes in so high a degree as cod-liver oil ”

“ The form in which nitrogen is present in the plant is chiefly as albuminoids. As, however, albuminoids belong to that class of bodies known as colloids, which cannot easily pass through porous membranes like those forming the walls of plant-cells, they are changed during certain periods of the plant's growth into amides, which are crystalloids, and consequently able to move freely about in the plant. Amides are most abundant in young plants during the period of their most active growth, and as the plant ripens the amides seem to be largely converted into albuminoids. ”

“ These are rapidly taken up by the blood-vessels of the stomach, which everywhere underlie its mucous membrane in an intricate and most delicate network. In this way the function of absorption begins.
30. Albuminose? The process? Chyme?
30. The albuminoid substances are speedily attacked and {94}digested by the gastric juice. From whatever source they are derived, vegetable or animal, they are all transformed into the same digestive product, called albuminose. ”

“ The same experiment showed that the organism can manufacture fats and carbo-hydrates at the expense of the nitrogenous food, when it does not find them ready formed in the ration. The albumen will suffice for all the needs of energy and and matter. To sum up, there is no necessary fat, no carbohydrate is necessary; albuminoids alone are indispensable. Theoretically, the animal and man alike could maintain life by the exclusive use of proteid food ”

“ Now, if we were to confine ourselves to wheaten bread, we should be obliged to eat in order to obtain our daily supply of albuminoids, or ‘flesh-formers,’ nearly 4 lb.—an amount that would give us nearly twice as much of the starchy matters which should accompany the albuminoids—or, in other words, it would supply not more than the necessary daily allowance of nitrogen, but almost twice the necessary daily allowance of carbon. ”

“ The hypothesis explains also that necessity for albuminoids in the food of the laboring animal which practical experience has shown to exist, as well as the fact that there is no greater excretion of nitrogen during work than during rest; the proteine serves as the basis for the alternate synthesis and analysis which constitute what might be called the atomic mechanism of muscular activity without itself being destroyed. ”

“ They contain a small number of minute starch granules and are not altered on addition of a salt of iron. The interior layer exhibits a single row of small, densely packed cells. The albumen is composed of the usual tissue loaded with granules of albuminoid matter and drops of fatty oil.
Chemical Composition—Brandes (1819) and Lassaigne and Feneulle (1819) have shown this drug to contain a basic principle. Erdmann in 1864 assigned it the formula C24H35NO2; he obtained it to the extent [Pg 7] of 1 per mille in crystals, soluble in ether, alcohol, chloroform, or benzol. ”

“ The fiber, ash, fat, and albuminoids are more abundant in the outer portion of the grain, especially the first three. It must be kept in mind that the albuminoids are the most expensive elements of food, and are frequently called the “flesh formers,” because they produce muscles. The starchy compounds are employed for the production of heat in the animal system. ”

“ A similar plethora of albuminoids and globules may be induced in a plethoric animal by a profuse diarrhœa, diuresis or perspiration, the blood having been robbed of its watery constituents, and concentrated especially as regards its globules and albuminoids, but hæmoglobinæmia never occurs as the result of such an artificial concentration. On the contrary a free secretion by the bowels or kidneys is of the greatest value in cutting short its progress after it has set in. ”

“ In man, doubtless, the albuminoids are usually in excess of what is required for tissue-building; but in herbivora, probably, the albuminoids are not in excess of the requirements of the decomposing tissues. ”

“ Thus it is shown that the amount of force represented by the actual decomposition of albuminoids during work is by no means adequate to account for the work done, even supposing that all the nitrogenous material decomposed in the body went for that purpose, and that no other muscular work were performed during the ascent than the mere lifting of such a weight to the given height. ”

“ In chemistry, the name of a class of albuminoids that are soluble in water, as serum and egg albumen. Egg albumen differs from serum by giving a precipitate when agitated with ether; it is scarcely soluble in strong nitric acid ”

“ This did not become possible until after the researches of Miescher and Kossel on the nucleins, which went on from 1874 to 1892, and those of Lilienfeld and d’Yvor Bang on the histones, from 1893 to 1899. The complete albuminoids are constituted by the combination of two kinds of substances—albumins or histones on the one hand, and nucleins on the other. By combining solutions of albumins or histones with solutions of nuclein, the synthesis of the proteid is effected. The study of the properties and characteristics of these nucleo-albumins and nucleo-histones is going on at the present moment. ”

“ Protoplasm, a non-crystallizable substance, is both physically and chemically of a highly complex composition not determined with exactness, but known to consist mainly of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon, variously combined in such proportions as to produce representatives of three classes of chemical substances—the albuminoids, the starches, and the fats—the albuminous constituents largely predominating in native undifferentiated protoplasm. ”

“ Admitting that albumin plays in alimentary diet only the plastic part of reconstruction of used-up corporal matter, it might be advantageous to ingest but one albumin the composition of which is very similar to our own. By virtue of the law of least effort such a one in equal weights ought to be of more service than a foreign albumin, as it requires less organic work. For man, albumin of animal origin ought to be more profitable in equal weight than vegetable albumin. In the organism, indeed, albumin passes through a double labour. ”

“ Since the fats and sugars, whose role is largely that of fuel, are interchangeable to a large extent, and since the vegetable fats are in every respect equivalent to the animal fats, the question of the adaptability of a vegetarian diet resolves itself into the concrete question whether plant albumin is the equivalent of animal albumin as tissue-builder. The chemical investigations into the constitution of albumins, carried out largely during the past two decades, have taught us that albumins are composed of simpler substances, termed amino-acids ”