Experiments and observations to investigate the composition of James's powder / [George Pearson].

  • George Pearson
Date:
[1791]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Experiments and observations to investigate the composition of James's powder / [George Pearson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    smell; and, urged with the intensest fire, showed no signs of fusibility. 2. It readily dissolved, with effervescence, like marble, in both muriatic and nitric acids, giving clear solutions. 3. The nitric solution (2,) being evaporated partly to dry- ness, and partly to the consistence of extract, the dry residuary matter was white; and the extract-like matter, which was bitter, could not be fused under the blowpipe; but, when brought to the state of a powder, the particles of it were made to cohere loosely together into one mass. 4. On dropping sulphuric acid into the muriatic solution, (2.) turbidness, and a copious white precipitation, immediately en- sued, from the composition of sulphate of lime. From these experiments it is warrantable to conclude, that the above urinary calculus of a rabbit consisted principally of carbonate of lime and common animal matter, with, perhaps, a very small proportion of phosphoric acid : it certainly con- tained no uric oxide. I examined, in the same manner, a concretion which was said to be from the stomach of a monkey; but I have not evi- dence of its origin equally satisfactory as that of the two last calculi. Its composition was found to be similar to that of the^ calculus of the rabbit, viz. carbonate of lime and animal matter. Its obvious properties were also fhe same; it was of the size of the largest nutmeg, III. On urinary Concretions of the Horse. I examined several specimens in cabinets, said to be vesical calculi of the horse, and found none of them to contain the uric oxide above described; but that they consisted (as well E 2
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