Early Physiological Chemistry

Berzelius became interested in animal chemistry and its applications in medicine from the late eighteenth century. He began to lecture on the subject and in 1806-08 published a two-volume chemical textbook in Swedish based on his lectures. This was never translated into English and only limited parts of it became known in this 

Attempts were also made to correlate clinical observations with the results of chemical analyses of the urine and its deposits and to post-mortem observations. No one was more successful in this field than Richard Bright working at Guy s Hospital in London with a team of young physicians and medical students.135-137 They studied the symptoms of kidney disease by clinical and chemical examinations and related their observations to post-mortem examination of the morbid kidney. Bright, whose work was published in 1825, was one of the first physicians to couple his hospital treatments systematically with chemical and physiological research directed towards precision in diagnosis and treatment.138 

---

Intermediary metabolism a term from early physiological chemistry, signifying all those metabohc reactions occurring between the uptake of foodstuffs and the formation of excretory products. In modern usage, I.m. is essentially identical with Primary metabolism (see). 

T During the first third of the twentieth century, a major focus of research in physiological chemistry was the identification of vitamins, compounds that are essential to the health of humans and other vertebrates but cannot be synthesized by these animals and must therefore be obtained in the diet. Early nutritional... 

Biochemistry became a distinct science in the early twentieth century. In the United States, it arose from the merger of physiological chemistry and agricultural chemistry. Contemporary biochemistry has three main branches ... 

The prehistory of peptide chemistry lies hidden in early studies of proteins, in physiological chemistry, for instance in the efforts toward understanding of the relationships between nutrients and the composition of blood. 

The questions whether 5a-C-centered radicals exist in oxidation chemistry of a-tocopherol and whether mechanisms proposed in early days of vitamin E research are correct might appear academic at a first glance, but as soon as one recalls the immense medical, physiological, and economic importance of a-tocopherol and its... 

In addition to the references after each Chapter, many of the articles in early editions of Annual Reviews of Biochemistry, Advances in Enzymology, Advances in Protein Chemistry, International Reviews of Cytology, Physiological Reviews, Vitamins Hormones, and other review serials, refer to specific topics considered in the text. Most of the articles we have cited give an overview of the topics. Where these are available many individual references have been omitted. 

Laboratory assessment of the composition of the blood plasma is often carried out in clinical chemistry. Among the electrolytes, there is a relatively high concentration of Na"", Ca and Cl ions in the blood in comparison with the cytoplasm. By contrast, the concentrations of IC, Mg "", and phosphate ions are higher in the cells. Proteins also have a higher intracellular concentration. The electrolyte composition of blood plasma is similar to that of seawater, due to the evolution of early forms of life in the sea. The solution known as physiological saline" (NaCl at a concentration of 0.15 mol L ) is almost isotonic with blood plasma. 

---