On the Discovery of Fluorine in the Blood, 163 



matieres. Pour le moment, je dois me borner a prendre date et a prier 

 I'Academie de me donner acte de cette communication." 



I subjoiu for convenience of reference an English translation:— 



" From considerations which I shall shortly have the honour to submit 

 to the Academy, I have been led to verify the much-disputed assertion of 

 the presence of fluorine in the bones. My experiments having been affirm- 

 ative, I sought for fluorine in the blood, the only channel by which it could 

 have reached the osseous tissue ; and I found notable quantities of it, not 

 only in human blood, but also in that of several of the Mammalia (pig, 

 sheep, ox, dog), of several birds (turkey, goose, duck, fowl). 



" Results so uniform appear to me to give to fluorine an importance 

 which it has not yet obtained in medicine or jdiysiology ; they manifestly 

 contradict the opinion of Berzelius, that the presence of fluorine in the 

 bones is purely accidental, and that it is at any rate non-essential. 



" If other proofs were needed to show the necessity of revising the judge* 

 ment of the illustrious chemist, they would be found in the following facts : 

 there is fluorine in the bile, in the albumen of eggs, in the saliva, in the 

 urine, in the hair ; in the bans of animals (ox, cow, calf) ; in a word, the 

 organism is penetrated by fluorine ; and we may expect to flud some in all 

 the liquids with which it is impregnated, 



In an early work I shall make known the very simple processes by means 

 of which I have recognized the presence of fluorine in all those substances. 

 For the present I limit myself to noting the date, and asking the Academy 

 to give me formal acknowledgement of this communication." 



From the statement of Nickles, which I have quoted in full, 

 it will be seen that its author was led by his verification of the 

 conclusion, first announced at Rome by Morichini and Gay- 

 Lussac in 1802, that fluorine occurs in the bones of animals, to 

 infer that it must be conveyed to these organs by the blood, and 

 to seek for it in that fluid. 



The majority of analysts, however, have long ago justified the 

 early Roman observations. In particular the question of the 

 presence of fluorine in bones was keenly contested in London in 

 1843, and analyses confirmatory of its occurrence in them were 

 published by Professor Daubeny and Mr. Middleton ; to which 

 in 1846 I added, in a communication made to this Society, the 

 accordant results obtained by Professor Gregory and myself, and 

 drew attention to the suggestion of Professor Graham of London, 

 and of Dana, the American geologist, that animals possibly de* 

 rived the fluorine found in their tissues from fluoride of calcium 

 held in solution by water containing carbonic acid. In the same 

 paj)er I adverted to the conclusion of Mr. Middleton, founded 

 ou his detection of fluorine in a multitude of aqueous deposits, 

 that " beyond a doubt it is present in water, though perhaps in 

 very minute quantity: .... The simple fact that the blood con- 

 veys it to the bones would, I apprehend, sufticiently confute any 

 Bcepticism on the subject.^' 



At this point I took up the inquiry in January 1846, and on 

 April 6 of that year communicated a paper to this Society, in 



