Excerpt from The Chemical Basis of LifeNow nothing is more familiar to_the student of elementary chemistry than that heat facilitates and cold retards the activity of a chemical process, but it is equally well known to the student of elementary physiology that heat facilitates and cold retards the activity of a vital process. This does not indeed amount to a formal proof of the identity of life and chemical action, but it constitutes a high probability that they have something essential in common. When we make the remark that red-haired persons are usually irritable, we assert something that cannot mean that red hair 1n itself is the cause of bad temper. There must underlie both red hair and bad temper some one common antecedent chemi cal conditiori. That hair should be red instead of black or brown is a question of the chemistry of melanin, and the chemical pecu liarity in the skin which is expressed as redness of hair must be intimately related to some other chemical peculiarity of the nervous system which expresses itself as irritability in the mental condition _of the person in question. The absence of pigment from the skin and hairs of certain animals (albinos) is known to be associated with certain chemical peculiarities of their blood.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.