CHAPTER
IX
ON THE RELATIONS OF TRYPSIN AND AMYLOPSIN
WHEN one reads some of the things which
have been written concerning trypsin in some medical journals, as well as in
American daily newspapers, one might think that our present knowledge of this
and other ferments dated back to the time of Moses, or that it was embraced
among the laws of the Medes and Persians. Actually, of course, a knowledge of
any real functions of the pancreas gland is not yet sixty years old, and the
name “trypsin” goes no further back than 1876, when it was bestowed finally on
one of the pancreatic ferments by the investigator, Wilhelm Kühne, of
Heidelberg. The name “amylopsin” is of still more recent origin (Wingrave,
“Amylolytic Ferments,” Lancet, 1898, i., p. 1251). The latest phase of
our knowledge will be found in the third edition of Oppenheimer’s book, “Die
Fermente,” in which there is a table classifying ferments into tryptases,
amylases, etc. Reference should also be made to the circumstances that some
investigators have been of opinion that trypsin was not a single ferment, and
that a” vegetable trypsin” had also been recognized. Now, it has long been the
writer’s experience that no useful end was served in scientific research by
dividing and subdividing things, so as to increase their number; on the
contrary, that the unity of organic nature was always
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