TO PRODUCE FERMENTATION. Ill 



a calf, digested with weak muriatic acid, gives to 

 this fluid no power of dissolving boiled flesh or co- 

 agulated white of egg. But if previously allowed to 

 dry, or if left for a time in water, it then yields, to 

 water acidulated with muriatic acid, a substance in 

 minute quantity, the decomposition of which is 

 already commenced, and is completed in the solu- 

 tion. If coagulated albumen be placed in this so- 

 lution, the state of decomposition is communicated 

 to it, first at the edges, which become translucent, 

 pass into a mucilage, and finally dissolve. The same 

 change gradually affects the whole mass, and at last 

 it is entirely dissolved, with the exception of fatty 

 particles, which render the solution turbid. Oxygen 

 is conveyed to every part of the body by the arterial 

 blood ; moisture is everywhere present ; and thus we 

 have united the chief conditions of all transforma- 

 tions in the animal body. 



Thus, as in the germination of seeds, the presence 

 of a body in a state of decomposition or transforma- 

 tion, which has been called diastase, effects the solu- 

 tion of the starch — that is, its conversion into sugar ; 

 so, a product of the metamorphosis of the substance 

 of the stomach, being itself in a state of metamor- 

 phosis which is completed in the stomach, effects the 

 dissolution of all such parts of the food as are capable 

 of assuming a soluble form. In certain diseases, 

 there are produced from the starch, sugar, &c., of the 

 food, lactic acid and mucilage. (24) These are the 

 very same products which we can produce out of 



