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Updated: May 5, 2025
Now, if the vinegar plant gives rise to the oxidation of alcohol, on account of its merely physical constitution, it is at any rate possible that the physical constitution of the yeast plant may exert a decomposing influence on sugar.
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.
For after the nitrifying organisms have oxidized nitrogen cleavage products, the results of the oxidation in the form of nitrates or nitric acid are left in the soil, and may now be seized upon by the roots of plants, and begin once more their journey around the food cycle.
From this latter has been gotten a hydrocarbon, C H , conylene, homologous with acetylene, C H . Conine, on oxidation, yields chiefly butyric acid, but among the products of oxidation has been found the pyridine carboxylic acid before referred to.
The most important of these zorinta is obtained from a tenacious soil much resembling our own clay. It is far lighter than tin, has the colour and lustre of silver, and never tarnishes, the only rust produced by oxidation of its surface being a white loose powder, which can be brushed or shaken off without difficulty.
The investigations of recent years have rendered it more and more probable that the light exhibited by phosphorescent organisms is due to a chemical process somewhat analogous to that which goes on in the burning of a candle. This latter process is one of rapid oxidation.
So, we consume within our bodies certain nutritious substances to obtain from them the energy necessary for our activities. Just as the energy for the working of the engine is obtained from steam by the combustion of fuel, so the energy possessed by our bodies results from the combustion or oxidation within us of the food we eat.
It is also well known that ammonia, and various nitrogenous organic matters, are the materials from which the nitric acid is produced. Till the commencement of 1877 it was generally supposed that this formation of nitrates from ammonia or nitrogenous organic matter was the result of simple oxidation by the atmosphere.
These waste products represent the oxidation that has taken place in the tissues in producing the energy necessary for the bodily activities, just as the smoke, ashes, clinkers, and steam represent the consumption of fuel and water in the engine. Plainly, therefore, if we could restore to the body a supply of these four elements equivalent to that cast out, we could make up for the waste.
But the animal may also have the power in another way of affecting the chemical conditions of the phenomenon. It may, for example, have the power of increasing or diminishing by some nervous influence the supply of the necessary alkaline ingredient. But if animal phosphorescence is really due to a process of slow oxidation, there is one singular circumstance to be noted in connection with it.
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