iA Sana es 
REPORT OF MEDICAL SECTION. 139 
. 
Provisional Report of the Committee of the Medical Section 
of the British Association, appointed to investigute the 
Composition of Secretions, and the Organs producing them. 
Part I, 
Tue Committee appointed by the Medical Section of the British 
Association to investigate the chemical composition of glands 
and their respective secretions, have been prevented by different 
circumstances (amongst which have been the lamented death of 
one of their number, and the disturbed health of another) from 
rendering a complete report on the subject referred to them. 
They are desirous however of making such a statement of their 
progress as may invite the co-operation of animal chemists in 
the extensive and somewhat difficult field in which they find 
themselves engaged. 
The manifest object of the investigation proposed to your 
committee has been to obtain, through the medium of animal 
chemistry in its present improved state, some further insight 
into the mysterious and vital process of secretion. 
The terms in which this inquiry is proposed seem to give to 
it a particular direction, the reason for which may not be very 
obvious ; and as they were suggested by one of your committee, it 
may not be amiss to assign here the reasons which occasioned this 
| course to be pointed out: before proceeding to do so we will 
| offer one remark in opposition to a generally received opinion 
| respecting the process of secretion. It seems to be considered 
that in as much as this process is one in which vitality is con- 
cerned, it is removed from the province of chemistry ; from this 
Opinion we totally dissent, seeing that whatever changes are 
produced in the proportion and mode of combination of the 
Minents of which bodies are composed, must, when not merely 
mechanical, be essentially chemical, and that the introduction 
of an agent, though it be no less important than the influence of 
life, does not in any degree detract from its chemical character. 
We have merely to consider that the elements both act and are 
acted upon under peculiar circumstances, which offer some ana- 
logy to what is seen when chemical elements are exposed to the 
influence of caloric or electricity ; their inherent properties are 
not destroyed, but they are modified when they are placed under 
these influences ; and as the investigation of chemical changes, 
in which the two influences just mentioned are concerned, has 
tended greatly to improve our knowledge in respect to them, so 
