Observations on the nature and properties of fixible air : and on the salutary effects of the aqua salubris, in preserving health, and preventing diseases : to which are added, strictures on the present practice of physic, pointing out the causes which greatly obstruct the improvement of the healing art / By John Melvill.
- Melvill, John.
- Date:
- [1787]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Observations on the nature and properties of fixible air : and on the salutary effects of the aqua salubris, in preserving health, and preventing diseases : to which are added, strictures on the present practice of physic, pointing out the causes which greatly obstruct the improvement of the healing art / By John Melvill. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
18/100 page 12
![[ 13 ] By the experiments of Boyl and M'Bride, the antifceptic quality of Fixible Air, or its power of refifting putrefadion, has been clearly illuftrated. V/ithout its being extricated from a' body no putrefaction can happen, and, even by the abforption of it, putrid fabftances may asuin be rendered fweet. o Mr. Bewley has afcertained it to be an acid, and that it does not in the leaft participate of the vegetable or mineral acids employed to •procure it» The experiments of Sir John Pringle and Dr. M'Bride (many of vvhich I have repeated with great fatisfadtion) are fufficient to con- -Vince any unbiased reader, that. Fixible Air is liberated from our aliment in the a£t of digef- tion, which is proved to be a fermentive pro-. , cefs It is this procefs which brings about that new difpofition and, dilFerent combination in the parts of the alimentary fubftances, which enables the immenfe variety of difcordant mix- tures that enter into the compofition of our food, to depart fo far from their original na- * Fermentation by chymifts, defined to, be an intef- tme motion excited fpontaneoufly, with the afSftaiice of prq^r heat and fluidity, betwixt the integrant and confti- tucnt parts of certain compound bodies, from which refult; new combinations of the principles of thofe bodies, tuires^](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21483188_0018.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
