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Updated: May 8, 2025
*Osmosis not a Sufficient Cause.*—The passage of materials through animal membranes, according to the principle of osmosis, is limited to crystalloid substances. But colloid substances are also known to pass through the various partitions of the body.
It knows well the part played by carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen in organic chemistry, that without water and carbon dioxide there could be no life; it knows the part played by light, air, heat, gravity, osmosis, chemical affinity, and all the hundreds or thousands of organic compounds; it knows the part played by what are called the enzymes, or ferments, in all living bodies, but it does not know the secret of these ferments; it knows the part played by colloids, or jelly-like compounds, that there is no living body without colloids, though there are colloid bodies that are not living; it knows the part played by oxidation, that without it a living body ceases to function, though everywhere all about us is oxidation without life; it knows the part played by chlorophyll in the vegetable kingdom, and yet how chlorophyll works such magic upon the sun's rays, using the solar energy to fix the carbon of carbonic acid in the air, and thereby storing this energy as it is stored in wood and coal and in much of the food we consume, is a mystery.
The scruples of physicists ought to have been removed on the memorable occasion when Professor Van t'Hoff demonstrated that solution can operate reversibly by reason of the phenomena of osmosis. But the experiment can only succeed in very rare cases; and, on the other hand, Professor Van t'Hoff was naturally led to another very bold conception.
And he shows, by means of illustrations, in part Bunge’s, in part his own, and in close sympathy with Wundt’s views, that even these vital phenomena cannot possibly be explained in terms of chemical affinity, physical osmosis, and the like. All the mechanical processes in living organisms are initiated and directed by psychical processes.
Again nothing. Yet both make for the nourishing spot. Theories are put forward, most learned theories, introducing capillary action, osmosis and cellular imbibition, to explain why the caulicle ascends and the radical descends. Shall physical or chemical forces explain why the animalcule digs into the hard clay? I bow profoundly, without understanding or even trying to understand.
The laws of cryoscopy, of tonometry, and of osmosis thus again become strict, and no exception to them remains. If the dissociation of salts is a reality and is complete in a dilute solution, any of the properties of a saline solution whatever should be represented numerically as the sum of three values, of which one concerns the positive ion, a second the negative ion, and the third the solvent.
Part of the food is composed of fat, and this fat, as the result of digestion, is mechanically broken up into extremely minute droplets. Although these droplets are of microscopic size they are not actually in solution, and therefore not subject to the force of osmosis which only affects solutions.
The digested food is carried down the alimentary canal in a purely mechanical fashion by muscular action, and when it reaches the intestine it begins to pass through its walls into the blood. In this absorption we find engaged another set of forces, the chief of which appears to be the physical force of osmosis. The force of osmosis has no special connection with life.
You'd think he'd have to get past some way, wouldn't you?... I remember vaguely wondering whether the name of that Runner was not Conscience; but Conscience isn't a matter of molecules and osmosis.... One thing, however, was clear; I'd got to tell Rooum what I'd learned: for you can't get hold of a fellow's secrets in ways like that. I lost no time about it.
After the juice has been purified and all the crystallizable sugar has been separated from it by boiling, there is left a mass of molasses, containing so much of the salts of potassium and sodium that no further crystallization of the yet remaining sugar is possible. The object of the process called osmosis is to carry off these salts.
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