822 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Another light is thrown upon the waste poisons of the tissues 

 by the statement that they exhaust the power of muscle to con- 

 tract. Muscle taken from a freshly killed animal, if fed with 

 arterial blood, or blood supplied with oxygen, may retain for some 

 time its power of contraction. But if venous blood (blood that has 

 lost its oxygen and is charged with waste poisons) be injected 

 into it, the power of contraction is lost quicker than if no blood 

 be supplied to it. In the same way the power of the muscle is 

 soon exhausted if a solution containing substances which can be 

 extracted from muscle (such as kreatin, lactic acid, etc.) be in- 

 jected into it (M. Foster, page 150). These facts help us to see the 

 local mischief which must often arise from these poisons, as well 

 as their effects on the nerve-centers. Many an ache and pain are 

 probably due to local effects of the waste poisons, whether they 

 are the normal waste poisons of the system, which under un- 

 healthy conditions of life we are not properly getting rid of, or 

 the special waste poisons of skin and lungs that we have re- 

 breathed into the system.* 



work excreting. At every breath we give off a small quantity of poison, whether we are 

 breathing in pure or bad air. The quantity given off is extremely (extraordinarily) small 

 — so small that it can only be approximately measured by the amount of carbonic acid in 

 the air. These bacteria are present whether we live in foul air or pure air. Their exist- 

 ence there means that they can thrive, and if they thrive they must feed, and if they feed, 

 they must excrete, or something analogous to it. Personally, I am inclined to think they 

 (these special lung and skin poisons) come from the blood, because ptomaines can be formed 

 by the action of various chemical agents (such as acids) upon protoplasmic or albuminous 

 material and as blood (serum) is albuminous, and as it contains various substances derived 

 from tissue waste — e. g., lactic acid, uric acid probably, etc. — it may be that the two react 

 upon one another, producing these ptomaine-like poisons. I think, however, that it is just 

 possible that they may be formed on the surface. 



* Where Nature does not get fair play, where, for example, the blood is vitiated by our 

 constantly rebreathing poisons that have been already got rid of, other dangers probably 

 exist. In the delicate chemical translations which take place when tissue is being changed 

 into harmless waste, it may happen that the process goes wrong, and an abnormal poison 

 is formed. Thus, under certain circumstances, instead of urea, uric acid is formed ; thus 

 in urfemia, or retention of urea in the system, various secondary compounds are formed 

 (Carpenter, p. 448), which act on brain or spinal cord as narcotic poisons ; thus, in acute 

 yellow atrophy, where liver-cells lose a part of their activity, a substance called leucin is 

 manufactured to a considerable extent instead of urea (M. Foster, p. 755) ; thus gall-stones 

 are formed instead of gall, and certain changes take place in the bile, by which some of its 

 constituents cease to be dissolved in it (M. Foster, p. 431); thus the ptomaines— a class of 

 mysterious poisons— are formed in the system (Quain, Ptomaine, p. 1816) after various ill- 

 nesses. [In connection with these ptomaines a dispute arose during an Italian trial as to 

 whether a poison detected in a body was strychnine, or this naturally formed ptomaine.] 

 Thus, too, Blythe (Poisons, A. W. Blythe, pp. 468-470) describes cases in which narcotic 

 poisons have been formed by synthesis of substances in the tissue or in the blood. So also 

 we might quote the interesting speculation of Dr. Carpenter (p. 368), that a cancer is an 

 excretory organ, formed to get rid of poisons in the system, illustrating once more " the 

 protective nature " even of that which brings pain and death; and the case of certain 

 pathogenic organisms, which, as Dr. Klein suggests (p. 248), may not affect healthy living 



