THE PRINCIPLE OF VITAL AFFINITY. 321 



ferent parts more or less rapidly, as they give up their carbon more or less easily, 

 is the immediate agent by which the extenuation of all is effected. 



4. We understand, certainly not completely, but better now than formerly, 

 the nature of the changes which take place in animals long fed on one kind, even 

 of albuminous food, equally as when albumen is withheld ; and which appear 

 in both cases to indicate a deficiency of the albuminous constituents of the blood ; 

 and likewise, certain phenomena in disease, connected with deficiency of those 

 albuminous constituents. 



There are several facts connected with such diseases which we cannot under- 

 stand, until we have some farther information as to the relation to each other in 

 the living body, of the different constituents of the blood which are albuminous, — 

 the red globules which contain the largest portion of that matter, — the white glo- 

 bules which seem to be more immediately concerned in nutrition, — the albumen 

 of the serum, — and the fibrin, which is in the smallest quantity, and which differs 

 from the albumen only in the peculiar (vital) attraction or aggregation among its 

 particles ; and which appears to exist in the living state partly, and, according to 

 Andkal's observations, entirely, in the white globules above noticed. Until the 

 relations of these different matters are better understood, we cannot explain how 

 some of the most striking symptoms of that disease which seems to be the most 

 directly produced by inadequate nourishment, viz., the Scurvy, are produced. 

 But in that disease we now know that there usually is a great deficiency in the 

 quantity of red globules, as well as either in the quantity or in the vital power 

 of the fibrin ; and we can now distinctly understand how it should happen that 

 scurvy should shew itself, both when there is a long-continued deficiency of suf- 

 ficient albuminous nourishment, and likewise when the nourishment taken is too 

 exclusively albuminous; — most frequently, in this last case, when it is at the same 

 time salted and hardened, and difficult of solution in the gastric juice, but, like- 

 wise, as repeated experience has shewn, when it is fresh and nutritious, but 

 uniform.* In the first case (exemplified in several prisons of late years), there 

 is a simple deficiency of azotised nourishment ; in the other, there is a deficiency 

 of the non-azotised matter which should protect this nourishment ; the oxygen 

 of the air th&efore acts upon it, and the chief result seems to be, that the formation 

 of the globules, apparently both of red and white globules, is prevented. Both cases 

 are illustrated by what happens in Beight's disease of the kidneys, where there 

 is such a change in the vital action of these organs, that they throw off prema- 

 turely much of the albumen of the blood ; the effect of which on the constitution 

 of the blood is to diminish greatly all its azotised constituents, even although a full 

 quantity of azotised food is taken ; the specific gravity of the serum falling, and 

 the proportion of the red globules to the other constituents of the blood becoming 



* See BuDD on Scurvy, in the Library of Medicine. 

 VOL. XVI. PAET III. 4 M 



