P H O S P H O R U S , A S T U D Y 275

t ' O S O L O O Y

Phosphorus must be used with caution in active tuberculosis and not prescribed in potencies higher than 30c. I t may be indicated in amyloidosis. I t is of special value in acute gastric ulcer. I t is prescribed often on the grounds of constitu- tional type.

I t has been found of value in allaying apprehension before operations in children.

Complementary remedies are Lycopodium, Sanguinaria and Sepia. I t may follow Nux vomica with advantage. I t should not be given in sequence to Causticum.

The improbability of life

In the Lancet's Occasional Survey of May 18th, T. L. Dormandy reviews some recent developments in physics which have a bearing on medicine-- entitled Towards Submolecular Medicine.

The transformation of food into bodily fuel and the release of energy is a problem which remains unsolved. I t is regulated by extraordinarily powerful substances which circulate in the body in ludicrously small concentrations.

Some of the substances have been identified and assigned structural for- mul~e, but we still do not know how they act.

While some of the problems of biochemistry appear capable of solution in terms of molecular science, others require what the Lancet describes as a new dimension of thought. This is the realm of electrons and wave mechanics. I t is suggested tha t the electrons "go it alone", and tha t lone electrons play an important par t in all the stages of metabolism.

This entails giving up the neat and t idy schema of a bivalent oxidation- reduction, and the rearrangement of the internal molecular pattern. The tech- niques of recognizing these charge-transfers are complicated and difficult, of which electron-spin resonance spectroscopy is revealing some remarkable data.

The Nobel prizewinner Szent-GySrgyi has pointed out tha t physics is the science of probabilities, but in contrast biology is the science of the improbable.

He has written: " I f metabolism were built of a series of probable and thermo-dynamically

spontaneous reactions, then we would burn up and the machine run down as a watch does if deprived of its regulators.

"The reactions are kept in hand by being statistically improbable and made possible by specific tricks, which may then be used for regulation. So for the living organism reactions are possible which may seem impossible, or at least, improbable to the physicist." (Szent-GySrgyi. Introduction to a Submolecular Biology. 1960.)

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