Volume 1

Animal chemistry : with reference to the physiology and pathology of man / by Franz Simon ; translated and edited by George E. Day.

  • Johann Franz Simon
Date:
1845-1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Animal chemistry : with reference to the physiology and pathology of man / by Franz Simon ; translated and edited by George E. Day. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    to a continuous metamorphosis^ which may be regarded as the expression of its vitality. The nutrition of the peripheral sys- tem is effected by the liquor sanguinis, not by the blood-cor- puscles. The liquor sanguinis affords nutriment to the cells and organs, which possess an inherent power of selecting proper material, or of forming it from non-homologous matter, at the same time secreting the products of decomposition. The prin- cipal nutritive matters in the liquor sanguinis are albumen, fibrin, and fat. The chief products of this metamorphosis are the extractive matters and lactic acid, which occur in the ex- cretions, especially in the urine. Urea, bilin, and carbonic acid are either not products of the metamorphosis of the blood during the act of nutrition in the peripheral system, or at most they are only in part formed by it. They must be regarded as pro- ducts of the vital energy of the blood-corpuscles, which, doubt- less, possess the same power of attracting nutriment, and of throwing off decomposed products, as other living cells. The proper nutriment of these corpuscles is oxygen, albumen, and probably also fat, which are furnished them by the liquor san- guinis. The most important products of their metamorphosis are carbonic acid, urea, fibrin, extractive matters, and very pro- bably some of the constituents of the bile. The leading and most important object of this vital energy of the blood-corpus- cles is the production of animal heat, without which every function of the organism, nay even life itself, would be instan- taneously annihilated. The production of animal heat is due to the combination of oxygen with the carbon of the globulin ;i the principal products of this reaction are carbonic acid and urea, or uric acid, (which is excreted as a substitute for urea in most of those classes of animals in which elliptic blood-corpus- ' [Simon's views respecting the production of animal heat approximate closely to those expressed by our countryman, Mr. Ancell, in his 11th lecture on the blood. See Lancet, 1840, vol. i. p. 829, or Dr. Posner's German edition of the col- lected lectures, p. 200.]