Nornal human adults taking a diet without meat, fish, peas or beans excrete no creatine in the urine. The exceptions to this thus far observed are the appearance of small amounts of creatine in women during the menstrual period (1) and the creatinuria in women reported by Denis and Minot (2) following the ingestion of a high protein diet. Creatine is found in the urine of individuals suffering from wasting diseases, starvation, during carbohydrate deprivation, diabetes mellitus, poisoning by phlorhizin, hydrazine, adrenalin and sodium selenite, exophthalmic goiter, fevers and the muscular atrophies and dystrophies (3). The presence of creatine in the urine in pathological conditions is considered evidence of abnormal endogenous nitrogen metabolism of muscles. Shaffer (4) reports 0.18 gram of creatine nitrogen in the twenty-four-hour urine of patients ill with exophthalmic goiter. Of the several pathological conditions studied by Shaffer only in the post partum period did he encounter values in excess of this. Associated with the abnormal creatine excretion in exophthalmic goiter there was a reduced excretion of creatiniine. Normally the daily excretion of creatinine nitrogen per kilogram of body weight amounts to 7 to 11 mgm., whereas in the cases of goiter only 3 to 6 mgm. are excreted.Since the creatine-creatinine metabolism is apparently of great significance in normal muscle function the known disturbance of this phase of metabolism in exophthalmic goiter on the one hand and the effect of iodine administration in reducing basal metabolism and im-1 A brief abstract of this work was presented before the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine.
J OHN 16:7-11 constitutes one of the most baffling passages in the fourth gospel. Augustine acknowledged their difficulty; 1 and almost every commentator who has addressed the problem since Augustine has prefaced his interpretation with apposite notice that these verses are not easy to sort out. None of the interpretations offered so far is entirely free from difficulty; and the one about to be presented does not quite escape this curse either. Nevertheless, it does offer several distinct advantages and, as far as I know, has not been suggested before. The argument of this essay proceeds in three steps. First, the principal exegetical and theological uncertainties are set forth in cursory form. Second, the most important interpretations are briefly presented and criticized, without any attempt to provide exhaustive catalogues of proponents. Finally, a new proposal is offered and defended, with some diffidence. 'Augustine comments: Valde latebrosum est, nee isto sermone coarctandem, ne fiat obscurius brevitate (In Joan., Tr. 94,6). 2 A. H. Stanton ("Convince or Convict [John xvi. 8]," ExpT 33 [1921-22] 278-79) experimented with a meaning which shifted from phrase to phrase; but this is surely a recourse of desperation. Popular works are prone to unconscious shifts: e.g.,
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