TIMELY TOPICS

Northern Advocate, 24 October 1935, Page 6

TIMELY TOPICS

THE MISSING LINK. Highly significant experiments are being made at Liverpool University School of Chemistry to show how living plants succeed in making sugar from carbon dioxide and water. Bridging the gap between inorganic and organic chemistry, this process, according to thd Liverpool correspondent of the '“Sunday Times,” is the fundamental basis of life. Professor E. C. C. Baly, head of the Department of Inorganic Chemistry, says: “While the series of experiments is not yet complete it seems highly probable that we have discovered the secret of the mechanism of the vital processes which take place in men and animals in health and in disease. The discovery has a direct bearing upon what I consider to be the highest aim of chemistry and its greatest achievement —the cure of disease. All living organisms consist of a co-ordinated system of chemical processes. Disease is the disturbance of one of these. Such a disturbance, may result in death, the irreversible destruction of the co-or-dination on which life depends. Vital chemistry is undoubtedly based on surface reactions, that is to say reactions of substances when ‘absorbed’ on surfaces, such as the enzyme systems in the human body. It is to the mechanism of these that we believe the key has been found.” <s><s> <S> 3> Words of Wisdom. The wisest thing we suppose That a man can do for his land , Is the work that lies under his nose, With the tools that lie under his hand,. —Rudyard Kipling. <s> <s>'s> <S> Tale of the Day. “Well, Pat,” remarked the foreman, “I’m sorry to see you leave the works. Aren’t the wages satisfactory?” “The luages are all right,” returned Pat, “hut I keep having a guilty feeling all the time.” “About what?” “I’m all the time thinkin ’ I’m doin’ a horse out of a job.”