[412] Cf. Heron-Allen, Phil. Trans. (B), vol. CCVI, p. 262, 1915.
[413] See Leduc, Mechanism of Life (1911), ch. X, for copious references to other works on the artificial production of “organic” forms.
[414] Lectures on the Molecular Asymmetry of Natural Organic Compounds, Chemical Soc. of Paris, 1860, and also in Ostwald’s Klassiker d. ex. Wiss. No. 28, and in Alembic Club Reprints, No. 14, Edinburgh, 1897; cf. Richardson, G. M., Foundations of Stereochemistry, N. Y. 1901.
[415] Japp, Stereometry and Vitalism, Brit. Ass. Rep. (Bristol), p. 813, 1898; cf. also a voluminous discussion in Nature, 1898–9.
[416] They represent the general theorem of which particular cases are found, for instance, in the asymmetry of the ferments (or enzymes) which act upon asymmetrical bodies, the one fitting the other, according to Emil Fischer’s well-known phrase, as lock and key. Cf. his Bedeutung der Stereochemie für die Physiologie, Z. f. physiol. Chemie, V, p. 60, 1899, and various papers in the Ber. d. d. chem. Ges. from 1894.
[417] In accordance with Emil Fischer’s conception of “asymmetric synthesis,” it is now held to be more likely that the process is synthetic than analytic: more likely, that is to say, that the plant builds up from the first one asymmetric body to the exclusion of the other, than that it “selects” or “picks out” (as Japp supposed) the right-handed or the left-handed molecules from an original, optically inactive, mixture of the two; cf. A. McKenzie, Studies in Asymmetric Synthesis, Journ. Chem. Soc. (Trans.), LXXXV, p. 1249, 1904.
[418] See for a fuller discussion, Hans Przibram, Vitalität, 1913, Kap. iv, Stoffwechsel (Assimilation und Katalyse).
[419] Cf. Cotton, Ann. de Chim. et de Phys. (7), VIII, pp. 347–432 (cf. p. 373), 1896.
[420] Byk, A., Zur Frage der Spaltbarkeit von Razemverbindungen durch Zirkularpolarisiertes Licht, ein Beitrag zur primären Entstehung optisch-activer Substanzen, Zeitsch. f. physikal. Chemie, XLIX, p. 641, 1904. It must be admitted that further positive evidence on these lines is still awanting.
[421] Cf. (int. al.) Emil Fischer, Untersuchungen über Aminosäuren, Proteine, etc. Berlin, 1906.