Note 102 — THE INDIVIDUAL ORGANISM WITH REGARD TO FORM AND METABOLISM (continued 3)

The theory of oxidation we have shortly sketched here was developed in chapter B. 5, of my Organische Regulationen. Recent discoveries of Winterstein’s (Zeitschr. allg. Physiol. 6, 1907) have given the strongest support to my hypothetic statements, and, in fact, can be said to have brought the doctrine of organic oxidation to a critical point. There can be no doubt that oxygen not only plays the “antipoisonous” rôle I had assigned to it, but that it is not even of such great importance for the supply of functional energy as former times had assumed. No doubt it serves to drive the functional machine, but decomposition of certain chemical constituents of the organism serves this purpose even more. The latter does so in the most fundamental and original manner, so to speak, whilst oxidation only burns up its products. Almost all elemental functions, in nerve-tissue at least, go on very well in the absence of oxygen, provided that certain “poisonous” substances, resulting from this anaërobic metabolism, are constantly removed. In normal conditions that is done by oxygen, and in doing so oxygen certainly assists the supply of energy, but it does not furnish the whole of it. The difference between so-called “aërobic” and “anaërobic” life almost completely disappears under such a view, and many so-called “regulations,” of course, disappear at the same time; there is no more “intramolecular respiration.”