478 APPENDIX. 



basic acetate of lead, and tannic acid, throw down abundant 

 precipitates. 



Metalbumen is the name applied by Scherer* to another sub- 

 stance which he found in a dropsical fluid. Like the preceding 

 substance, it is also precipitable from its watery solution by 

 alcohol, and is again soluble in water ; it is, however, not pre- 

 cipitable by acetic acid or ferrocyanide of potassium ; moreover, 

 on boiling the solution after the addition of acetic acid, there is a 

 mere turbidity and no precipitate. 



Similar substances have also been found in the urine in morbid 

 states, especially in Bright's disease, and have received various 

 names. 



Mialhe and Pressatf believe that they have succeeded in 

 tracing albumen through certain successive metamorphoses ; they 

 do not, however, base their views on satisfactory chemico-experi- 

 mental evidence. According to them, normal physiological albumen 

 exists in the fluids in a molecular state, and hence, not being 

 actually dissolved, is not amenable to the laws of endosmosis ; it 

 is, moreover, characterised by its coagulability by heat and by the 

 insolubility of the precipitate produced by nitric acid in an excess 

 of the acid. Its first stage of metamorphosis is represented by 

 the amorphous casein-like albumen which is produced by the action 

 of the gastric juice ; this is endosmotic, but not assimilable, and is 

 imperfectly precipitated by heat and nitric acid ; the precipitate 

 induced by the latter is soluble in an excess of the acid. They 

 apply the term albuminose to the endosmotic and assimilable 

 substance which is finally produced by the action of the gastric 

 juice on the albumen. MialheJ maintains (without any additional 

 evidence) that the substance precipitable by alcohol but again 

 soluble in water, which Verdeil and Dollfuss found in the normal 

 blood of the ox and called albumen, is identical with this albu- 

 minose. Mialhe|| has, however, the merit, notwithstanding many 

 errors, of being the first closely to study the changes which the 

 albuminous matters undergo during gastric digestion. 



The acid albumen of Panum which has been already mentioned 

 in p. 476, appears, from his subsequent and more carefully con- 

 ducted experiments, to be likewise a product of the metamor- 



* Verhandl. d. phys.-med. Ges. zu Wiirzburg. Bd. 2, p. 278. 



t Compt. rend. T. 33, p. 450. 



$ Ibid. Vol. 34, p. 745. 



Ann. d. Ch. u. Pharm. Bd. 74, S. 218. 



|| Jonrn. de Pharm. et de Chim. 3 S^r. T. 10, p. 161-10?. 



