ABSTRACT
The story of enzymes in medical practice has its origins in 1833. Anselme Payen and Jean-François Persoz discovered that a large amount of insoluble starch granules was converted into soluble dextrin by a small amount of a water-soluble substance isolated from malt extract. In 1836, citing the work of Payen and Persoz, Berzelius formulated the concept of a catalytic force to cover a wide range of chemical phenomena common to organic and inorganic nature and occurring only in the presence of some third substance. The term "ferment" was used for a long time for any agent that could bring about a chemical reaction in biological material. Since in most biochemical reactions of that time only the starting and final components were known, Berzelius often resorted to a vitalistic explanation for the intermediate mechanism that he could not explain. Many chemists were of the opinion that enzyme purification should yield protein-free material.
