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In this case the albuminous substance does not exist; we have only the mineral substances which will serve to produce it. We know that Liebig regarded yeast, and, generally speaking, any ferment whatever, as being a nitrogenous, albuminous substance which, in the same way as emulsin, for example, possesses the power of bringing about certain chemical decompositions.

Even that deadliest of poisons, hydrocyanic acid, is probably assimilated, and helps to make living tissue, if it do not kill the patient, for the assimilable elements which it contains, given in the separate forms of amygdalin and emulsin, produce no disturbance, unless, as in Bernard's experiments, they are suffered to meet in the digestive organs.

It is true that there are circumstances under which yeast brings about modifications in different substances. Doebereiner and, Mitscherlich, more especially, have shown that yeast imparts to water a soluble material, which liquefies cane-sugar and produces inversion in it by causing it to take up the elements of water, just as diastase behaves to starch or emulsin to amygdalin.

Even that deadliest of poisons, hydrocyanic acid, is probably assimilated, and helps to make living tissue, if it do not kill the patient, for the assimilable elements which it contains, given in the separate forms of amygdalin and emulsin, produce no disturbance, unless, as in Bernard's experiments, they are suffered to meet in the digestive organs.