AbstractsMedical & Health Science

the living organism are constantly undergoing processes of destruction and of growth. These processes involve physico-chemical reactions whose end-products are either simpler compounds derived from more complex molecules, or conversely, higher compounds from lower ones: in short, the processes of catabolism and anabolism. The sum total of these reactions, from which derives the energy necessary to maintain life, constitutes metabolism. Under this term are included all the mechanisms tending to regulate the rate of these reactions; the enzyme systems, the hormones and vitamins (and these may be synonymous) 9 the nervous stimuli, and a host of other 'factors, most of them unknown, all functioning towards the common end of homeostasis. [...]