Pharmacy

1939 — 478 p. 8vo. 230 mm. Cloth backed marbled boards. On the front paste down is a Nazi registration stamp: 'Dereinnahmt im bestandbuch uber Bucher' dated 1942, and signed by Rosenberg as karteifuehrer. Carl Wilhelm Wolfgang Ostwald (1883-1943) was a German chemist and biologist famous for his research on colloids. He was born in Riga, the son of the 1909 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Wilhelm Ostwald. 'In the early 20th century, before enzymology was well understood, colloids were thought to be the key to the operation of enzymes; i.e., the addition of small quantities of an enzyme to a quantity of water would, in some fashion yet to be specified, subtly alter the properties of the water so that it would break down the enzyme's specific substrate.' It was proposed that life itself was explainable in terms of the aggregate properties of all the colloidal substances that make up an organism. As more detailed knowledge of biology and biochemistry developed, the colloidal theory was replaced by the macromolecular theory.' The Nazi registration impratur (essentially a license to print or publish) makes this example all the more interesting. DENTISTRY 1