Physical Chemistry - Wolfgang Pauli

PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY IN THE SERVICE OF MEDICINE SEVEN ADDRESSES BY DR. WOLFGANG PAULI Privaldocent in Internal Medicine at the University of Vienna AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY DR. MARTIN H. FISCHER Professor of Pathology at the Oakland College of Medicine FIRST EDITION FIRST THOUSAND

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AUTHOR’S PREFACE. THE addresses which have been collected for the first time in this volume and which were delivered in the main as summaries of my own special investigations concern themselves with the application of physical chemistry to different fields in medicine as rendered possible more particularly through advances in the physics and chemistry of organic colloids. In that questions in physiology as well as pathology and pharmacology are touched upon, it may perhaps be hoped that different circles of medical men may be interested in the problems discussed in this volume. The translated addresses differ in only a few unimportant abbreviations from the original. The development of the guiding thought common to all of them stands out quite clearly. Its foundation is the extensive parallelism between the laws which govern changes in the colloidal state in vitro and in the living organism. Even though the future may become acquainted with many a new fact through which the questions discussed in this volume may be made to appear in a different light, it will scarcely be possible to belittle the fruitfulness of the methods described and the stimulating effect of the results obtained through them. Since all the results that these methods can yield are as yet by no means attained it is hoped that the volume may be looked upon as a modest attempt to win friends capable of work in this still young field of labor. WOLFGANG PAULI. VIENNA, May 1, 1906.

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. IT is hoped that the following translation of a few of Dr. Pauli’s papers may render some of the work of this modest Viennese investigator already familiar to a large circle of American and English workers accessible to yet others. The fundamental character of the subjects touched upon by the author needs no comment. It is only hoped that the translation may not have lost too much of the spirit and the letter of the original German. The volume as a whole represents another stone in the structure of physical chemistry in the biological sciences; and while it is not the tendency of modern times to divide existing sciences or to create new ones, specialism is followed as a matter of necessity, so that it will not seem strange if in the near future we shall come to recognize as branches developing separately from the trunk which all these sciences have in common, a physico-chemical physiology and a physico-chemical pathology. MARTIN H. FISCHER. OABLAND,CALIFORNIA.

PREFATORY NOTE TO AMERICAN EDITION. THE advance of medicine is so dependent upon progress in the fundamental sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology that he who will keep abreast of modern conceptions in physiology and pathology is compelled to be more or less conversant with theory and practice in the basal subjects. When one considers the phenomenal development in recent years, through the work especially of Willard Gibbs, van’t Hoff, and Arrhenius, in the domain of what is designated physical chemistry, it is not surprising that attempts should have been made to apply the new knowledge gained to the clearing up of some of the problems which confront the physician. While the application of stoichiometrical methods in medicine and biology has led and is leading to fruitful results, it is from the utilization of the principles of the other great branch of physical chemistry, that which deals with energy-relations in chemical processes, that most is to be hoped; that many of the medical conceptions of the future are to be colored by the ideas of thermochemistry, electrochemistry, chemical kinetics, and chemical dynamics even those of us who are entirely untrained in these sciences are compelled to admit. The work already done on reaction-velocity, catalysis, equilibrium, viscosity, osmotic pressure, and electrolytic dissociation in the human and animal body may be regarded as an earnest-penny of greater good hereafter. The new medicine will require a new preliminary training of its workers. A few investigators in biology and medicine have been wise enough to foresee the path which future inquiries must follow; we should be thankful that they have prepared themselves for the pioneer work of blazing the trail. Notable among these hardy explorers are some of our foremost American workers in physiology. Among European scientists, Dr. W. Pauli of Vienna stands out prominently as a representative of the forward movement. His researches in physiology and pharmacology have dealt almost entirely with problems in the solution of which the methods of physical chemistry have been applied. In his recent studies in

colloidal chemistry he has been prying into and attempting to illuminate some of the darkest of the regions in which physiological chemists grope. The American publishers of Dr. Pauli’s papers have been fortunate in securing the services of Dr. Martin Fischer as translator. The experience he has gained by his personal researches in similar fields, and his familiarity with the bibliography of the whole subject, especially fit him for the task. May Dr. Pauli’s papers stimulate American students to further investigations where they are so much needed, and may he and they collect speedily for us a body of facts which we, as medical men, may utilize in the diagnosis of disease and the cure of human ills! LEWELLYS F. BARKER. BALTIMORE, Oct. 23, 1906.

CONTENTS. 1. ON PHYSICO-CHEMICAL METHODS AND PROBLEMS IN MEDICINE 2. THE GENERAL PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY OF THE CELLS AND TISSUES 3. THE COLLOIDAL STATE AND THE REACTIONS THAT GO ON IN LIVING MATTER 4. THERAPEUTIC STUDIES ON IONS 5. ON THE RELATION BETWEEN PHYSICO-CHEMICAL PROPERTIES AND MEDICINAL EFFECTS 6. CHANGES WROUGHT IN PATHOLOGY THROUGH ADVANCES IN PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY 7. ON THE ELECTRICAL CHARGE OF PROTEIN AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE

PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY IN THE SERVICE OF MEDICINE. 1. On Physico-chemical Methods and Problems in Medicine.* THE last decades have brought with them an amalgamation of two sciences,— physics and chemistry,—which have no doubt always had mutual relations, although formerly these were not so intimate or extensive as they are now. This amalgamation was undoubtedly inaugurated through physics, and must be attributed primarily to the stimulus which brought with it the establishment of the laws of thermodynamics. I cannot here sketch even briefly the development of thermodynamics. As is well known, the law of the conservation of energy as most clearly enunciated by MAYER forms its foundation. The remarkable experiments of JOULE next led to an exact determination of the mechanical equivalent of heat, while through HELMHOLTZ was developed and executed the most extensive programme for the application of the law of energy to all subjects. The penetrative analysis of thermodynamical phenomena by CLAUSIUS and THOMSON completed the subject with the establishment of the so-called chief laws of thermodynamics. The transformations in energy in chemical reactions have in general two sources. As is well known every change in the state of aggregation is accompanied by either an absorption or an evolution of heat. Since changes in physical state often accompany a chemical reaction, these constitute therefore one of the sources of the transformations in energy accompanying this reaction. A second is found in the chemical reaction itself. The synthesis or analysis of a substance is accompanied by a thermal change which may have either a positive or a negative value. To illustrate this we may cite the formation of a salt from an acid and a base with the development of the so-called heat of

neutralization; or the decomposition of a salt into its components with a using up of electrical energy. All these metamorphoses in energy constituted from the first a fruitful field for work, in which medicine also soon took part. While, however, the decrease in the potential energy of the foodstuffs in the metabolism of men and the higher animals constitutes one of the best developed chapters of medicine, calorimetric investigations of the culture media of bacteria are still lacking, and this in spite of the fact that this subject promises the solution of an important problem, namely, the energy of growth. Further relations between chemical constitution and physical properties were discovered by the new science, physical or theoretical chemistry. Under this heading must be mentioned first of all the connection discovered between optical asymmetry (rotation of the plane of polarized light) and asymmetry in chemical composition. At almost the same time LE BEL and VAN’T HOFF discovered that all optically active substances which in the non-crystalline state rotate the plane of polarized light contain an asymmetric carbon atom, the four valencies of which are connected with four different radicles. If we imagine these four valencies connected with the corners of a tetrahedron, the four radicles may be grouped in two different ways and be symmetrical. The development of this idea, which constitutes the foundation of stereochemistry, has been very fruitful. The doctrine of the asymmetrical carbon atom is destined to play an important rôle in biological problems also, for such essential constituents of protoplasm as the proteins and many carbohydrates must, to correspond with their optical activity, contain such an asymmetrical carbon atom. The connection between physical changes in state and chemical constitution was early indicated by the regularity with which bodies of the aliphatic series affect the boiling-point. More recently a connection between color and the position of certain groups in the molecule known as chromophores has been discovered. Similar conditions exist in the case of fluorescence which is connected with the existence of fluorophore radicles, and in the case of antipyretics the effect of which is intimately associated with their chemical constitution. The modern theory of solution as harmoniously enlarged through VAN’T HOFF’S conception of the gaslike condition of the dissolved particles, and ARRHENIUS’S teaching that electrolytes—salts, acids, and bases—dissociate upon solution into their constituent ions, has also found extensive scientific application to many subjects including medicine.

Physical Chemistry - Wolfgang Pauli

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