176 French National ListUuie. 



the bile, and that which colours the skin and the urine during 

 the jaundice, is produced also by some combination of oxy- 

 gen with the fibrine matter of the muscles, or with that of 

 the blood. 



Messrs. Fourcroy and Vauquelln have employed them- 

 selves also on the analysis of milk ; and their researches have 

 greatly simplified the theory of it. They have discovered 

 that the acid which is developed in it, and which was con- 

 sidered to be of a particular nature, is nothing but the acid 

 of vinegar modified bv some animal substances and some 

 salts which it holds in soKuion. Milk, according to them, 

 must be considered as a mixed liquor, consisting of a great 

 deal of water and of two kinds of matters, some of them 

 really dissolved, as sugar, mucilage, muriate and sulphate 

 of potash, and acetic acid ; others merely suspended, as the 

 matter of cheese, that of butter, and the phosphates of iron, 

 lime and n\agnesia. 



Considering the infinite complication of this first aliment 

 of young animals, these gentlemen give us new motives for 

 admiring the providence of nature, which has deposited in 

 it all the materials of speedy growth. The caseous sub- 

 stance is almost the same as that of the muscles ; the phos- 

 phate of iron is one of the elements of the blood ; and that 

 of lime forms the earthy basis, and is tl]e cause of the hard- 

 ness of the bones. 



These gentlemen also have made a remark which may be 

 interesting to medicine : it is, that the whey does not con- 

 tain phosphoric salts, but when it can dissolve them in au 

 excess of acid, and that it contains none when it is sweet. 



There are in chemistry some questions, which though on 

 the first view they seem entirely particular, yet the solution 

 of them may extend to so many different objects that it 

 might produce a revolution in the whole system of our 

 knowledge. Such, for example, arc the deposits formed 

 by ortranizcd bodies of substances which we consider as 

 simple, and which, as appears, these bodies, imder several 

 circumstances, could not acquire from without, but must 

 have produced by combination. 



Do animals form lime, and vegetables argil and silex, a.s 

 some naturalists assert ? The generation of stones and that 

 of mountains, and the whole history of our globe, depend 

 in some measure on this problem. It is to it we may refer 

 the analysis ol the tabasheer, a kind of stony concretioa 

 which is formed in the bamboo. 



Messrs. Fourcroy and Vauquelln have found, as was said 

 some years ago, that it is almost pure silex. But how could 



silcx 



