The normal and pathological movement of water in tissues and its relation to the colligative properties of solutions and to inflammation.
A series of studies, each suggested by those that preceded, were first concerned with the movement of water in parenchymatous cells of liver, kidney, submaxillary glands, and other glandular organs. Evidenee was soon obtained showing that these cells were isotonic as determined by the osmotic pressure they maintained, not with physiological salt solution (0.15 M), as at that time popularly assumed, but with sodium chloride in approximately twice this concentration. Cells of the liver or of the kidney acted as osmometers and measured the osmotic pressure which they maintained. When various eleetrolytes were tested, it was found that their osmotic pressures varied with the valence of the basic ions of the salts that were used, being, for example; I for monovalent sodium salts, 2 for calcium salt, 3 for lanthanum salts. Solutions of the salts of eleetrolytes manifest properties so bound together that they are designated colligative. These properties include osmotic pressure, depression of the freezing point, vapor tension, and boiling point of solutions. It is well established that any one of them provides data from which the others can be dedueed by appropriate calculation.1 The changes which oceurred in liver or in kidney were found to be in aecord with tables which record changes in the freezing point of graded solutions of salts of electrolytes, on the one hand, or of boiling points on the other. Visible necrosis of the skin of laboratory animals was produeed by injeetion into the dermis, and the molar strength of solutions of various electrolytes needed to cause it was determined. This varied with the valence of the basic ions of the salts that were tested and followed a sequence which was the same as that of the isotonicity of liver or of kidney cortex immersed in corresponding solutions. The molar concentration of amino acids that produced necrosis followed the same order as osmotic pressure of liver in the same solutions. The relation of necrosis to the colligative properties of electrolytes suggested a study of the relation of inflammatory reactions to the moleeular constitution of agents that cause them. Injection of injurious substances into the large serous cavities of the body, peritoneal and pleural, offered a method by which exudation of fluid, leucocytes, and plasma protein could be measured with considerable accuracy. The numerical results thus obtained give an adequate measure of the inflammatory reactions. The relations cited emphasize the dependence of normal and pathological changes upon the colligative properties of electrolytes and of organic compounds which direet the movement of water and of the compounds it may contain. With these relations in mind, it has seemed desirable to review the sequence of studies which were undertaken to measure the movement of water in cells and interstitial tissue under normal and under pathological conditions.
ISOTONICITY OF LIVER AND OF KIDNEY TISSUE IN SOLUTIONS OF ELECTROLYTES
Solutions of a wide variety of electrolytes, isotonic with liver or with kidney tissue, have approximately the same osmotic pressure as solutions of sodium chloride isotonic with tissues of the two organs respectively; that is, with solutions approximately twice as concentrated as the sodium chloride of mammalian blood plasma. The molar concentration of various electrolytes isotonic with liver or with kidney tissue immediately after its removal from the body is determined by the molecular weight, valency, and ion-dissociation of these electrolytes in accordance with the well known conditions of osmosis. The plasma membranes of liver and of kidney cells are imperfectly semipermeable to electrolytes, and those that enter the cell, though retarded in so doing, bring about injury which increases permeability to water. The osmotic activity of cells of mammalian liver and kidney immediately after their removal from the body resembles that of plant cells, egg cells of marine invertebrates, and mammalian red blood corpuscles and presumably represents a basic property of living cells by which osmotic pressure may be adjusted to functional need.
General Biochemistry
Traité de Biochimie GénéralePar M. Javillier, M. Polonovski, M. Florkin, P. Boulanger, M. Lemoigne, J. Roche et R. Wurmser. Tome 1: Composition Chimique des Organismes. Premier Fascicule: Pp. iv + 1–706. Deuxième Fascicule: Pp. iv + 707–1475. (Paris: Masson et Cie., 1959.) Broché 22,000 francs; Cartonné toile 24,500 francs les deux volumes.