Kapronczay Károly szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 226-229. (Budapest, 1914)
TANULMÁNYOK - Elek Gábor: 2013-ban volt Bauer Ervin halálának 75. évfordulója
216 Comm, de Hist. Artis Med. 226-229 (2014) in search of a position. Therefore his Fundamentals (Bauer 1920) could not have significant immediate effect on the above debate. Its immediate effect was possibly that it helped Bauer to secure a place at the Institute of General Biology and Experimental Morphology of the Charles University in Prague where he worked as a research associate. A new period of his life began. These were the years when he had to learn through the practice of a subordinate position the leading principles employed in the biological research. These principles themselves underwent a significant alteration at the twenties in the last Century. It has become accepted to explain life phenomena by molecular processes. At the end of the 19th Century in the development of the cell theory the dynamic position of the cell became the protoplasm, whose most characteristic property was the resemblance to albumin. This approach required, however, some knowledge of the chemical structure of albumin like molecules. The albuminoidal substances - albumin, casein, fibrin - later to be known as proteins, were considered as labile uncristallisable substances susceptible to alteration by heat or mild chemical treatment and their elementary composition suggested chemical complexity. Such materials could not be fitted into the fabric of the contemporary structural organic chemistry - and the proper, real biochemistry did not yet exist. Some chemists had excluded these compounds from organic chemistry and had denoted them ‘organised substances’ rather than organic compounds. The new domain of physical chemistry called colloid chemistry, however, offered some possibilities for investigating the forces working among such large sub-microscopic particles, the so-called colloids (Ostwald, Wo. 1919; Buzágh 1931). The choice for interpretation of life was between the uncertain structural theory of organic chemistry and the popular physical chemistry as sources of inspiration. The colloid chemistry of protoplasm offered to biologists a more satisfying guide to the molecular explanation of physiological phenomena than did organic chemistry. “There are animals, e.g. amoebae that can hardly be distinguished morphologically from some colloidal mixture of liquids and there are plants, such as small bacteria that cannot be distinguished from small structures present in certain disperse systems (colloids). ’’ (Hartmann 1953 18.). Cell organelles were explained as a jellified (gel) state of spongoid protoplasm-sol, secretion by its syneresis (shrinkage) and enzyme activity by adsorption on its semi-permeable membranes, etc (Ostwald 1919 129- 147.; Buzágh 1931 33.). The albuminoids were therefore largely pursued in medical laboratories rather than in chemical institutes, thus accentuating the separation of organic chemistry from physiology (see Fruton 1976). Such type of physiological laboratory was Rűzicka‘s institute in Prague, the Institute of General Biology and Experimental Morphology of the Charles University. Ruzicka'’ s main efforts were based on the postulate that dissimilation leads to the accumulation of an increasing amount of insoluble albuminoidal products - as he called them - ‘plastin1 during ontogenesis. Aging according to Ruzicka was nothing else than the jellification of the sol state of the protoplasm. He used the term hysteresis for the production of plastin by the living tissue and regarded it as an expression of entropy increase in the organisms. Accordingly, he accepted the validity of the second law of thermodynamics in living cells (Ruzicka 1924). Physical - energetic - explanation of hysteresis therefore was fully acceptable to Ruzicka. Bauer obtained an attractive possibility to apply his permanent non-equilibrium principle to Rűzicka’s colloid model of aging.
