A textbook of biochemistry for students of medicine and science / by A.T. Cameron.

  • Alexander Thomas Cameron
Date:
1931
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A textbook of biochemistry for students of medicine and science / by A.T. Cameron. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Biochemistry has a wide application in agriculture, in all that concerns both animals and plants ; it includes the study of the chemical facts of normal plant growth and composi¬ tion, and may have much to contribute in the study of plant diseases and their causes. In all probability the biochemist who has specialised in this subject itself will, in the future, be more extensively used in industry than is the ordinary chemist of to-day. For we are slowly acquiring command of a most powerful chemical engine, the enzymic actions of bacteria, of the fungi, and of moulds, and are beginning to realise what tremendous chemical changes can be brought about easily by these simple organisms. Whilst such a biological engine has been employed by man ever since he realised that beverages con¬ taining alcohol had an important beneficial pharmaco- dynamical action, it is only recently that this type of action has begun to have the attention that it merits. Biochemistry is the newest of the sciences. It is true that the Iatro-chemists—the medical chemists of whom Paracelsus (1493-1541) is perhaps the most outstanding figure—be¬ lieving that human illnesses result from abnormal chemical processes within the body, which could only be counteracted by appropriate chemical remedies, had a biochemical concept (however erroneous), but they started the study of pharma¬ cology, rather than of biochemistry, although, of course, pharmacology can quite properly be regarded as applied bio¬ chemistry—the study of the action of specific chemical com¬ pounds on the living organism. The ovum of biochemistry was fructified when Liebig and Woehler synthesised urea, and so commenced destruction of the belief that there existed a class of chemical compounds which require vital force, some unknown power within the living body, for their production. And biochemistry may be said to have been born during the late decades of last cen¬ tury. But, although the first chair of Physiological Chemistry was established in Strasbourg in 1883 we cannot regard the l—2
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