A treatise on the blood, inflammation, and gun-shot wounds / by John Hunter ; with notes by James F. Palmer.

  • John Hunter
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the blood, inflammation, and gun-shot wounds / by John Hunter ; with notes by James F. Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    more fluid, and continues so for a long time, with a strong effer- vescence; but it forms at length into a jelly or paste, although not a solid one. Here I suspect that the salt is evaporated, and likewise the water in the paste, so that it is not a true coagulation. When mixed with common water it is coagulated by heat; but the water separates with the other substance, and does not unite with the coagulum. Upon the coagulation of the serum by heat I have observed that it separates a fluid which is not coagulable by heat, and I have reason to believe by none of the other means, viz., spirits of wine, &c, though this is not so easily ascertained ; for the other coagu- lating substances, as spirits of wine, &c, are applied in a fluid form, and therefore a fluid may remain after the coagulation of the serum, which might be supposed to be the fluid separated ; but from other experiments it is proved that those substances coagulate the coagu- lating part and unite with the other. It is also observable in meat, either roasted or boiled, that when cut there flows from it a fluid more or less tinged with the red part, commonly called gravy. I conceived that this must be different from the coagulating part of the serum, believing that the heat had been sufficient to coagulate it; but I chose to try it further, and therefore gave it such heat as would have produced the effect if it had been coagulable by heat ; but I found it did not coagulate. The fluid separated from the co- agulable part of the serum, I conceived to be the same with this. Thus, then, I saw there was in the serum a matter coagulable by heat, and a fluid which was not so. Pursuing the above observations on dressed meat, I observed that the older the animal had been, the more of this fluid was con- tained in the meat. In lamb we have hardly any of it, in young mutton of a year old but little; but in mutton of three, four, five, or six years old, it is in large quantity: in veal also we have but little, while we have it in great quantity in beef. But perhaps we know less in general of the age of our beef than of our mutton.* t * It may be observed bere tbat this is very different from the jelly formed in boiling or roasting meat; that which forms the jelly is part of the meat itself, dissolved down in this very fluid, and the water in which it is boiled ; and we find that this effect is just the reverse of the above, for in young meat there is most of this jelly. f [This fluid, which is termed theserosity, may be obtained from the coagulum by gentle expression. It contains a little muriate of soda, a little free alkali, and about one-fiftieth of its weight of animal matter, principally albumen, which is immediately coagulated by galvanism or the mineral acids. Brande supposes that the albumen is held in solution in this case, as in the serum, by virtue of the free alkali which is present; but Dr. Bostock has objected to this view of the case, for reasons which have been adverted to in a previous note. The serosity does not appear to merit any particular attention. The basis of muscular fibre, or meat properly so called, is fibrin, which is in- soluble, except in very minute quantities, by the continued action of boilincr water. Jelly is a solution of gelatin, which is a distinct animal principle, with which young animals abound, but which, according to Prout, is a less animalized pro- duct than either albumen or fibrin.]