338 M. Dumas on the Chemical Statics of Organized Beings. 



takes in the accomplishment of the phaenomena of their daily 

 existence, the alterations which it undergoes after their death, 

 that we have had to study together, and this study alone has 

 quite sufficed us for this year's occupation. 



I. — Plants, animals, man, contain matter. Whence comes 

 it? What does it effect in their tissues and in the fluids which 

 bathe them ? What becomes of it when death breaks the bonds 

 by which its different parts were so closely united ? 



These are the questions which we touched upon together, 

 at first, with hesitation, for the problem might be far above the 

 powers of modern chemistry ; we afterwards considered them 

 with somewhat more confidence, as we felt from the silent and 

 inward assent of our understandings that the path was sure, 

 and that we could descry the goal gradually standing out, clear 

 of all that obstructed our vision. If from these labours, which 

 you have witnessed, or I should rather say, in which you have 

 taken part ; if from this scientific effort there have arisen some 

 general views, some simple formulae, it is my duty to become 

 their historian ; but allow me the pleasure of adding, that 

 they belong to you, that they belong to our school, the intel- 

 ligence of which has been exercised on this new ground. It 

 is the ardour with which you have followed me in this career 

 that has given me strength to pursue it; it is your interest which 

 has sustained me ; your curiosity which has awakened mine ; 

 your confidence which has made me see, and which proves to 

 me at this moment that we are still in the path of truth. 



These remarks will remind you of the wonder with which 

 we found, that of the numerous elements of modern chemistry, 

 organic nature borrows but a very small number ; that from 

 these vegetable or animal matters, now multiplied to infinity, 

 general physiology borrows not more than from ten to twelve 

 species; and that all the phaenomena of life, so complicated in 

 appearance, belong, essentially, to a general formula so simple, 

 that, so to speak, in a few words the whole is stated, the 

 whole summed up, the whole foreseen. 



Have we not proved, in fact, by a multitude of results, that 

 animals constitute, in a chemical point of view, a real apparatus 

 for combustion, by means of which burnt carbon incessantly 

 returns to the atmosphere under the form of carbonic acid ; 

 in which hydrogen burnt without ceasing, on its part conti- 

 nually engenders water; whence, in fine, free azote is inces- 

 santly exhaled by respiration, and azote in the state of oxide 

 of ammonium by the urine ? 



Thus from the animal kingdom, considered collectively, 

 constantly escape carbonic acid, water in the state of vapour, 

 azote, and oxide of ammonium, — simple substances, and few in 



