A treatise on the digestion of food / by G. Fordyce, M. D. F. R. S. fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and reader on the practice of physic, in London.

  • George Fordyce
Date:
1791
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the digestion of food / by G. Fordyce, M. D. F. R. S. fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and reader on the practice of physic, in London. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    [ 3* ] It has been a difpute among natural hif- torians, whether certain fpecies of thefe were actually animals or vegetables. For example, in thofe corals which are called keratophytons, the animal where it receives the nourishment, is clearly a polypus, living in a calcareous habitation which it forms like mell-mli. But it is attached to what has the femblance of a tree, or rather the ftem and branches of fome of the algi, only when diftilled by itfelf> it yields vola- tile alkali, and the empyreumatic oil of ani- mals ; but fo do the fungi, although they have been considered as vegetables. It is a queftion, whether this common idem and branches in keratophytons is to be consi- dered as dead or alive. The only reafon for believing it to be alive, is its not putrefying; but then it is to be confidered that both this, and the ftems of the algi that are fimilar to it, are hardly capable of being brought to putrefy long after all life is certainly gone eut of them.