Structure and Physiological Activity

A SURVEY of the road which the biochemist has trodden during the past twenty-five years reveals a plenitude of milestones whereby the rate and extent of his forward march may be judged. The year 1910 was within a short span of the birth of his science; only four years earlier, the Biochemical Journal had first seen the light of day. The records of this now twenty-nine-year-old journal bear witness to the immense expansion and deepening, during the past quarter of a century, of our knowledge of the laboratories of the living cell, and there are many similar records to be found in other countries. New light has come from all sides on the chemical processes of the organism in health and disease, in life and in death. Innumerable new substances and previously unknown phenomena have been discovered and added to the ever-increasing physico-chemical complexities of living cells and tissues.