Blood : a study in general physiology / by Lawrence J. Henderson.

  • Lawrence Joseph Henderson
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Blood : a study in general physiology / by Lawrence J. Henderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    38/434 page 12
    Fisher,12b and Pareto13 have seen, it is even more impor¬ tant in such circumstances than in the simple phenomena studied by physical science; more than this, for many purposes it is simply indispensable, because there is no other way even to begin to think, however approximately, about the quantitative relations between a large number of variables. Under these conditions the nomographic method, particularly in the form developed by d’Ocagne,14 has proved itself an indispensable aid to the physiologist. In this way it is often possible to construct a graphical representation of the facts and thus attain to a roughly comprehensive representation of the system as a whole. Such a construction also serves to illustrate many of the general characteristics of the physiological systems which are above discussed. When even an incomplete rational interpretation of the relations is also possible we begin to approach the methods of the physicist, for we can oper¬ ate nomographically and think theoretically. The activity of protoplasm is not less various and heterogeneous than its constitution. The modes of this activity may be classified in three categories as physico¬ chemical, chemical, and mechanical, though such a classi¬ fication, a very rough approximation, can hardly be ex¬ haustive. A basis for the discrimination between physico¬ chemical and chemical processes is to be found in the fact that although, next to water, proteins are the principal constituents of protoplasm, carbohydrates are often the substances which, as in muscle and in yeast, chiefly un¬ dergo metabolism. Thus there may be distinguished a relatively permanent, though active and changing system, which is regarded as the instrument that produces the more rapid metabolic or chemical process. A more objec¬ tive view discriminates between the true equilibria in protoplasm, such as the reactions of ions, and other re- 12b I. Fisher, Transaction of the Connecticut Academy, IX, 3 (1892). 13 V. Pareto, Manuel d’economie politique, p. 612, Paris, 1909; Manuale di economia politica, Milano, 1906. 14 M. d’Ocagne, Traite de nomographie, 2d ed., Paris, 1921.
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