SUGAR. 219 



facts well known to the physician to prove the truth of this propo- 

 sition, since the phenomena of indigestion in gastric catarrh, and 

 the temporary benefit derived in these conditions from the use of 

 acids are now explained by these purely physical relations. 



This proposition acquires still higher importance in reference 

 of the animal functions^ when we consider the antagonism of the 

 reactions of the different animal fluids, a condition which we shall 

 more fully consider at a future page. We will here simply observe, 

 that we find, when we examine the mixture of the animal juices 

 already noticed, that on the one hand the free acid is associated with 

 phosphates and potash-salts, and on the other hand a strongly 

 alkaline reaction with soda-salts and chlorides. These occurrences 

 are not the result of accident, and Liebig, as we shall presently see, 

 has with his usual ingenuity and success elucidated the object 

 and necessary results of this peculiar grouping of the acid and the 

 alkali, and of the different salts in the animal organism. If we 

 attend only to the constant difference in the reactions of the differ- 

 ent juices, we shall have to admit, that the alkaline nutrient fluid 

 of the blood must, in accordance with this physical law, transude far 

 less readily than the acid parenchymatous fluids through the walls 

 of the vessels. Even if the remarkable play of affinities in the 

 phosphate of soda might often give rise to an acid reaction, such 

 an effect could scarcely be produced unless carbo-hydrates were 

 introduced into the body, or generated within it, by whose con- 

 version into acids a part of the base would be abstracted from the 

 phosphates taken with the vegetable food in order to convert them 

 into acid salts, until the alkali, after being freed by combustion 

 from its organic acid, might recombine with the phosphate. 



If we deny this function to lactic and other organic acids, we 

 could not admit the occurrence of an acid reaction, or what is the 

 same thing, the formation of an acid phosphate in the organism, 

 if the carbo-hydrates, without forming acids, were consumed 

 in the same manner as in our furnaces or crucibles. The ash of 

 plants always exhibits an alkaline reaction (excepting in the case 

 of some seeds), and consequently the food of herbivorous animals 

 could only generate alkaline fluids within the body if the carbo- 

 hydrates were not, partially at least, converted into acids, and dis- 

 tributed with the phosphoric acid amongst the bases, thus serving 

 to restore the acid salts and the acidly reacting fluids. Nature 

 has, therefore, provided by this beneficial distribution of acids and 

 alkalies for the removal of all effete matters from the tissues in the 

 most rapid manner, and for their transference to the blood, where 



