Report on the progress of human anatomy and physiology in the year 1844-5 / [Sir James Paget].

  • James Paget
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the progress of human anatomy and physiology in the year 1844-5 / [Sir James Paget]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of proteine of Mulder. The extractive is obtained by the pressing of defibri- nated and coagulated blood, the neutralizing of the fluid pressed out, and again coagulating it, and filtering. To this filtered fluid, now free from albu¬ men, alcohol is added, and the precipitate thus obtained, being washed with water, yields chloride of sodium, phosphate of soda, and a very small quantity of substance like binoxyde of proteine. Boiling alcohol removes fatty matters from it, and ether a crystallizing fat. The body thus purified, both in its general characters and in the results of its chemical analysis, resembles in all essential respects the binoxyde of proteine. It exists in the serum—notin the blood-corpuscles—and, next to the saline constituents, forms the chief part of the extractive matters of the blood of man, and of the dog, ox, sheep, and pig. But what binoxyde of proteine may be is a question ; for doubts are now cast by Liebig* on the accuracy of Mulder’s researches from which he deduced the existence of proteine itself Liebig finds that the supposed binoyxde ftritoxyde?] of proteine obtained by adding ammonia to the solution of fibrine in dilute hydrochloric acid (the albuminose of M. Bouchardat), contains really all the sulphur which was present in the fibrine. And he finds that, when, as in the process proposed by Mulder, fibrine, albumen, or caseine is dissolved in potass ley, and the solution is neutralized by acetic acid, this solution con¬ tains no sulpliuret of potassium or other sulphur compound; but that, if the precipitate formed when the acetic acid is added (and which is the supposed pro¬ teine) be dissolved in potass, sulphur may be detected in it by adding sugar of lead to the solution. This precipitate, therefore, Liebig holds, is not proteine; neither does he find the corresponding precipitate obtained from peas to be free from sulphur; nor, finally, has he “yet succeeded in producing a lion- sulphuretted substance possessing the composition and properties of the so- styled proteine.” Dr. Buchananf has found the remarkable fact, that the liquid of hydrocele may be coagulated in five or more minutes into a transparent tremulous jelly- like substance, by adding to it a small quantity of the washed clot of blood. The same coagulating property is possessed in a less degree by several other animal substances ; e, g. the huffy coat of blood in minute shreds, or even when dried and pulverized ; the transparent coagulum on a blistered surface ; and, in various much less degrees, by muscle, skin, cellular membrane, spinal marrow, mucus, and pus. He thinks that the coagulant power is chiefly seated in the colourless blood-corpuscles, which exist, together with the inso¬ luble parts of the red corpuscles and some fibrine, in the washed clot; and with fibrine in the huffy coat; and in the coagulum from blisters. To these also he ascribes, I think, the usual coagulation of the blood ; the colourless corpuscles inducing the coagulation of the fibrine dissolved in the liquor sanguinis, and thus leaving its other constituents as serum, which is only deji- brinated liquor sanguinis. Fibrine. Dr. PolliJ has confirmed the fact, that when fibrine begins to pu¬ trefy in water, albumen is among the substances formed from it. He has also found that if serum be mixed with three or four times its volume of water, and then boiled, the milky fluid which remains, and which contains, accord¬ ing to Boudet, albumen combined with soda, is spontaneously coagulable. If left to itself for a few days it forms an opaque-white soft clot, from which a * Lancet, Feb. 20, 1845. t Medical Gazette, Aug 8, 1045, Dr^Buchanan argues as if it were proved that the fluid of hydro¬ cele contains fibrine, and that it is fibrinous coagulation by which it becomes jelly-like when the por¬ tions of clot or other substances mentioned are added. It may be so, but there is no proof of it; and he is not right, I think, in saying that hydrocele fluid is commonly regarded as analogous to liquor sanguinis. The same coagulability rnay be seen in other dropsical fluids, c.g. when blood is let into them after death. } Annali Univ. di Medicina, Feb. 1845.