The change in reaction of dying tissue

In the studies of tissue enzyme action which the senior writer has been making since 1910, there has always been the question of the stages immediately following the death of the tissue and also of the conditions of reaction of medium, which have been shown to regulate the character of the process, that is, the rate and equilibrium. An attempt was made by Strauss and Morse 1 to determine the reaction of medium in the kidney during hematogenous infarction brought on by ligation of the blood vessels and at the same time to determine whether autolysis proceeded or not. The former collaborator (D. C. S.) being called for service rendered it impossible to complete this series of studies. Earlier still 2 the S⊘rensen colorimetric method was employed in similar work, but the obvious difficulty of the time element involved in the dialysis inhibited very critical conclusions. Recently, Dernby 3 applied the S⊘rensen solutions with the Clark-Lubs indicators to the study of the problem, but the critical point regarding the inception of autolysis and the state of reaction of medium in the earliest stages was not investigated. In his third paper in the “Studies of Autolysis” 4 Bradley and collaborator found “soon after death” a reaction of P_H = 7.00 in normal liver, but inasmuch as beef and pig livers were used, it is probable that the source of supply was slaughter-house material as in previous work in the series, while there is nothing to indicate that the experiment with horse liver involved the incipient stages, so that no data seem to have been given which would permit one to judge how soon post mortem the experiments were conducted. Here, as in the studies of Dernby, the colorimetric method involving dialysis was employed (p. 263, I.c.).