GENERAL DIRECTIONS 201
Dr.
Cleaves first insisted, and Captain Lambelle has urged it too, during the
treatment scientific blood-examinations are of very great importance. This
again points to the treatment of cases in sanatoria.
The
system of units of tryptic and amylolytic activity adopted by Sir W. Roberts,
M.D., F.R.S., is an empirical one, but it possesses certain advantages over
some of the methods employed in scientific laboratories for estimating, for
example, tryptic activity. Unlike, for instance, the accurate scientific
methods advocated by Dr. Emil Westergaard and Dr. Tetens Hald (Lancet, November
t6, 1907, p. 1371 et seq.), it does not require a fully, equipped
laboratory for its accomplishment, and often I have used it in my own house.
With a little practice and after the careful study of Sir W. Roberts’ papers,
any physician ought to be able to use these excellent methods for himself with
very simple apparatus, which can be put together almost anywhere. The apparatus
should include a racing stop-watch. It may be that in course of time some more
severely scientific methods of estimating the activity of trypsin, and
amylopsin too, may, with great advantage, be employed, such as, for example,
the tryptic assay, advocated and discovered by Emil Abderhalden (Zeitschrift
physiol. Chemie, 1907, vol. li.). In the meantime the writer is content to
suggest, as at present sufficiently accurate and scientific for all practical
purposes, the tryptic and amylolytic methods discovered by Sir William Roberts,
and published by him in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, London, as well
as in a special book.*
* Roberts, William
“On the Estimation of the Amylolytic and Proteolytic Activity of Pancreatic
Extracts,” in Proc. Roy. Soc. London, 1881, vol. xxxii., pp. 145-161 and
“Digestion and Diet,” London, 1891, Smith, Elder and Co.
The test for trypsin was named by
Roberts “the meta-casein (cont. on p 202)