For many years physiologists have acknowledged that the ionic composition of excitable tissues is very much different from that of the external medium. They have also suspected that ionic differences play an important part in the propagation of electrical changes along nerve and muscle fibres. [...]

In 1922 Tashiro found that on incubation of frog sciatic nerve under aerobic conditions, a gaseous substance in addition to carbon dioxide was produced. He further showed that this other substance was ammonia, and was able to demonstrate that very small amounts of this substance were liberated as an end product of nerve metabolism under the particular experimental conditions.

The closest relative of carbon in the Periodic Table, silicon or silicium is named from one of the common minerals within which it occurs, namely flint, which in Latin was called "silex". After oxygen, silicon is the most abundant element in the earth's crust. Because of its great affinity for oxygen, it occurs exclusively as the oxide, namely silicon dioxide (silica) or quartz and as the hydrated oxide, silicic acid in the form of the salts of various metals. Silica may occur in the free state or mixed with other minerals in siliceous rocks notably in granites. Being one of the hardest components, silica is not as liable to disintegrative action of winds and rains as are the other components of granites.

The study described in this thesis constitutes part of a larger programme of research on blood preservation. Investigations concerned with the preservation of blood and the survival of red blood cells, and the use of plasma expanders were inaugurated in the Department of Biochemistry, at McGill University, soon after the onset of the second World War. From the time of its inauguration to the present, the various aspects of this research have been under the direction of Dr. O. F. Denstedt.

Following the demonstration by Quastel, Stephenson, and Whetham (1) and by Quastel and Stephenson (2) that the anaerobic growth of facultative anaerobes was secured by the presence in the nutrient medium of pairs of hydrogen donators and hydrogen acceptors (e.g. lactate-fumarate or glycerolaspartate), whose interaction provided energy for growth and pyruvic acid for the synthetic requirements of the cell (Quastel,3), Stickland (4,5,6) showed that similar considerations with respect to energy formation applied to strict anaerobes such as Cl. sporogenes.

Historically, it is of interest that Bright (30) in 1836 was probably the first to recognize the existence of hypertension in man. He had no instrument for measuring blood pressure and based his deductions on the gross pathological changes observed in patients dying of dropsy. As a result of the development of instruments for measuring blood pressure and improvements in microscopic technique, correlations were made between elevation of blood pressure, thickening of the walls of the arterioles and hypertrophy of the left ventricle of the heart.

It has been known for some time that rheumatic fever is accompanied by a change in the serum proteins. This was shown in 1939 by Longsworth and his co-workers with the aid of electrophoresis. The change is not always of sufficient magnitude to show a considerable alteration in the albumin/globulin ratio as determined by the salting out method of fractionation. Other tests have been used also to ascertain the degree of severity of the disease. Among the clinical tests in current use are the erythrocyte sedimentation rate, determination of the total protein, C-reactive protein, mucoprotein, and the albumin/ globulin ratio.

The study reported here is part of a larger research project on the preservation of blood which has been in continuous progress in the Department of Biochemistry under the direction of Dr. O. F. Denstedt since the outbreak of World War II. During the trial-and-error phase of the research in the early 1940's, it became evident that in order to do anything about the preservation of red cells it was necessary to know what metabolic systems undergo failure, in order to endeavour to prevent or correct the impairment. Accordingly, the emphasis of the programme was diverted to a study of the enzymology of the red cell and the nature of the changes that occur during storage and ultimately cause loss of function.

β,β-dimethylacrylic acid (I, β-methylcrotonic acid, DMA) has been prepared by a variety of methods, none of which give a good yield. Several routes involve α-halo-isovaleric acid derivatives as intermediates, from which the unsaturated acid is obtained by elimination of the halogen atom together with one of the β-hydrogen atoms (1, 2, 3).

Antibody-antigen interactions characterize both the immune and allergic conditions. The antibodies responsible for the allergic condition have been credited with several unique characteristics both to explain the difference in the clinical manifestation of immunity and allergy, and to explain the failure of detecting these antibodies in vitro. The purpose of the present investigation was to develop a simple, quantitative technique for demonstrating the antibodies in allergic sera.