Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The works of John Hunter / edited by James F. Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![What I call fermentation, only takes place in animal and vegetable matter when dead. It is that change which takes place in the sub- stances themselves out of their own spontaneity, without any external assistance. Chemistry is a kind of force on things to decompose them. In the process of fermentation, vegetable matter goes through inter- mediate stages, in which it is neither vegetable nor common matter; the same with animal matter during putrefaction. But in all the pro- ductions of a living animal or vegetable, the substances produced are animal or vegetable matter. The only substance produced in an animal which cannot be called animal matter is the earthy matter of bones, and of some diseased parts* * : it appears also that, in some of the secretions of animals, the products produced have none of the original properties of animal matter, as the sugar of milk, the bitter principle in the bile, these not having been found in any of the natural solids or fluids by any process whatever. But this does not come up to my notion of fermen- tation, for no process of fermentation of animal or vegetable matter ever produced either one or the other; and even in vegetables, where sugar seems to constitute part of the plant, it is formed by the action of the vegetable. If ever any matter is formed in any of the juices secreted in any part of a vegetable or animal body similar to what arises from fermentation, we may depend on it it arose from that pro- cess, but we may also depend on it that there is a defect of the living principle in those cases. The conversion of water into vegetables, which is vegetation, or of vegetable and animal matter into animals, which is animalization, is not a change taking place according to the nature of the substance, but is effected by the actions of the vegetable or animal. The different juices formed from the blood, called secretions, differ not from the nature of the blood as animal matter, all giving nearly the same substances when analysed, or subjected to fermentation. Nor can the substances formed in a vegetable be formed, by any process that we know of, from waterf. We might suppose that fermentation would produce an animal from a ces derni6res interviennent, sans aucun doute, plus qu’on ne le pense generalement dans les functions de nutrition ; et c’est mieux servir la science de la vie de reconnaitre cet intervention, et de l’etudier jusqu’a son extreme limite que de voir partout de la vitalite sans attacher a ce mot un veritable sens.”] * [It is a question with some geologists whether lime is not essentially an animal product.] •(• [The refinements even of modern chemistry have not yet enabled us to form any animal or vegetable principle ab origine from any combination of the ultimate elements. The substance called oxalamide, obtained by Professor Faraday from the oxalate of ammonia, approaches in character to an animal product, although it is not actually so. A few other examples of the same sort might be mentioned.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21996623_0001_0248.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
