IS 



EREMACAUSIS. 



ERGOT. 



tions are continued under the architraves. The height of the entabla- 

 ture of the Erechtheium is 4 feet 11 inches; and the height of the 

 Minerva Polias is 5 feet 5 inches. The rise in the pediment of the 

 portico of the latter is 3 feet 4 inches. The entablature of the Pan- 

 ilrosium is heavy ; it in decorated with dentils, and also with paterae on 

 the upper face of the architrave. The windows and doors diminish at 

 the top, and the friezes of the porticos appear to have been formerly 

 decorated, if we may judge from the remains of cramps and cramp- 

 holes on their faces. Some details respecting this building, not 

 published in Stuart, are given in the ' Erechtheion," a work on this 

 edifice by H. W. Inwood, architect, who has imitated the Erechtheium 

 and Pandrosium in the external design of part of St. Pancras Church, 

 London. Stuart's 'Athens,' vol. ii., contains the plans, elevations, 

 sections, and details of this building. 



EREMACAUSIS. Decay. Eremacausia literally signifies slow burn- 

 ing ; that is, gradual oxidation. 



In popular language, the word decay is expressive of the constant 

 retrogressive change of which matter U susceptible. The crumbling 

 walls of an old ruin, the few hollow trunks in its vicinity, and the 

 traces of life that once animated the scene, are familiar examples of a 

 state of things that is somewhat loosely expressed by the term decay. 

 A dead animal, under ordinary circumstances, soon commences to alter 

 in colour, noxious odours are emitted from it, and an appeal is made to 

 the eyes and nose of the observer sufficient to indicate that a consider- 

 able change from the normal condition of the animal is taking place. 

 This change is generally denoted by the word decay, and consists in 

 the gradual wasting or burning away of the animal by the chemiral 

 action of the oxygen of the air ; by which all parts of it, except bones, 

 are slowly and almort entirely resolved into gaseous compounds. Old 

 walls crumble away, not by true decay, not by the chemical action of 

 the oxygen of the air, but principally by the mechanical action of wind 

 and rain. 



In order therefore to avoid much ambiguity, it has long been the practice 

 in scientific treatises, and is now becoming the general custom, to 

 indicate decay proper by the term eremacausis. This term has also 

 the advantage of perfectly describing what is known to take place. 



Eremacauxi*. fermentation, and combustion, are phenomena that are 

 frequently very intimately associated ; but no difficulty will be found 

 in assigning to each its proper limits, if it be remembered, first, that 

 fermentation is simply a rearrangement of the constituents of a com- 

 pound ; second, that eremacausis is a slow oxidation of the compound 

 at common temperatures; and third, that combustion is rapid oxidation 

 of a compound at a temperature sufficiently high to produce light. 

 [CoMBusiiox ; FEBMEST.] 



The natural processes of fermentation and eremacausis may be not 

 inaptly compared with the artificial processes of dry distillation and 

 combustion. In the manufacture of gas, for example, coal is heated 

 in closed Teasels (that is, it is submitted to dry distillation), when a 

 rearrangement of the constituents of the cool takes place, and coal-gas, 

 coal-tar, coke, Ac., result. When, however, coal is burned in a common 

 stove, then the same kind of change U produced as occurs in erema- 

 causis, namely, a combination of the constituents of the coal with the 

 oxygen of the air, but the process goes on at a sufficiently rapid rate 

 and at a sufficiently high temperature to produce light, and is there- 

 fore denominated combustion. 



Eremacausis is almost entirely confined to the animal and vegetable 

 kingdoms. Few minerals are acted upon by the oxygen of the air, and 

 even when this action does take place the change is never a retro- 

 gressive one. Iron pyrites, for example, a compound of sulphur and 

 iron ( KeS,), undergoes slow oxidation on exposure to air, but the re- 

 sulting compound, sulphate of iron (FeO,SO,), is more complex than 

 the pyrites. 



Animals and vegetables grow or are built up by virtue of certain 

 influences which are sometimes aggregated under the name ritul force ; 

 and when these influences cease, not only does the progressive action 

 terminate, but eremacausis commences, especially if air and moisture 

 are present. Organised bodies are composed of matters called proxi- 

 mate principle*. Such are, in vegetables, starch, cellulose, gluten, 

 sugar, Ac., while in animals some of these principles form fat, others 

 Mood, Ac. These proximate principles are again composed of other 

 substances, called ultimate principles or elements. The elements 

 necessary to notice here, are carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen. 

 Organised bodies get these elements from the inorganic world, that is, 

 from the earth and atmosphere. Vegetables get carbon from carbonic 

 acid (CO,), a gas, composed of carbon and oxygen, and always present 

 in the air ; hydrogen and oxygen they chiefly obtain from water, and 

 * nitrogen from various sources, though the ultimate but indirect source 

 is, no doubt, the atmosphere, of which four-fifths are nitrogen. In addi- 

 tion to these elements, vegetables contain bone-forming material (phos- 

 phate of lime, Ac.), which they have obtained by tbe'r roots directly 

 from the earth, and which material, after having performed its office of 

 building up the animal skeleton, is again returned to the earth without 

 going through re-composition, or decomposition. Some animals derive 

 the elements enumerated, by feeding upon vegetables ; whilst others 

 derive these principles more directly by feeding upon animals. Thus 

 are animal and vegetable organisms built up, but at every step the 

 combination of forces above alluded to, is essential, and its action con- 

 sists chiefly in the production of complex compounds from more simple 



AT AICD sci. Div. VOL. m 



ones ; hence it might be expected that the elements composing these 

 complex compounds having been, so to speak, drawn out of their first 

 and most stable condition, should have a tendency to return to that 

 state in which the forces that operated upon them are either removed or 

 altered in direction. Such is indeed the case, and this retrogressive 

 change, or eremacausis, soon commences after the cessation of life, and 

 goes on at, according to circumstances, a slow or rapid rate. In illus- 

 tration of eremacausis let us follow the element carbon through one 

 or two of its circles of usefulness. Thrown into the atmosphere, 

 from the combustion of coal or wood, under the form of carbonic, 

 acid, it is absorbed and assimilated by plants, the oxygen of the car- 

 bonic acid being returned to the air. The leaves of the plant will 

 probably die when winter comes, and then will either undergo thorough 

 or partial eremacausis, the carbon being either slowly but completely 

 burnt into carbonic acid and returned into the atmosphere, or partially 

 oxidised and converted into humus, or vegetable mould. 



Other parts of the plant are perhaps eaten by man or the lower 

 animals, and their carbon thus becomes part of an animal body, 

 there to do duty until chemical affinity, under the form of erema- 

 causis, once more restores the carbon to the air as carbonic acid, only 

 to pass again through the same cycle of changes. 



The three remaining chief elements of organised bodies are also 

 affected by eremacausis, the hydrogen being converted into water, and 

 the nitrogen, either into nitric acid or ammonia, while the oxygen 

 escapes either as water or carbonic acid. 



Eremacausis appears essentially to precede and determine the pro- 

 cesses of fermentation and putrefaction, and hence, if organic sub- 

 stances be rigidly excluded from contact with oxygen, they cannot be 

 subject to either of these processes ; since eremacausis can only occur 

 in the presence of free oxygen. Advantage is taken of this fact to 

 preserve meat and vegetables in all their original freshness, by enclosing 

 them in air-tight canisters, from which atmospheric air has been 

 carefully expelled. If the smallest trace of air be suffered to remain in 

 the canisters or in the pores of the enclosed substances, eremacausis 

 commences, and determines putrefaction, which latter process, once 

 commenced, is scarcely retarded by exclusion of air, and thus it is that 

 meats carelessly preserved are found, on opening the cases, to be utterly 

 putrid. [FERMKST; PCTHEFACTION.] 



ERGOT, M tdical /. '/. Ergut is a name bestowed upon a pecu- 

 liar state of the seed of several cereal grains, but most frequently of 

 the rye, which resembles a spur, or horn ; hence, likewise, termed 

 Secale cornutum, or spurred rye. Even the common rye-grass is liable 

 to its attacks, and more rarely some cyperaceous plants. A partial 

 list of these is given in the papers of Smith, Quekett, and Bauer, in 

 ' Trans, of Linnscan Society,' vol. xviii. pp. 449-482, and a more com- 

 plete one by Phoebus (Deutschl. Kryptogam. Giftegewiichse. Berliu, 

 1838). Whether this state of the grain be merely an altered condition 

 of the pistil, or the result of the puncture of insects, or of the develop- 

 ment of a fungus, is doubtful ; but the best authorities incline to the 

 opinion that it is a fungus. (See Mr. Bauer's paper on the Uredo fcetida 

 ' Supplement to the Penny Magazine,' March, 1833.) De Candolle con- 

 siders the fungus to be the Sclerotium clavus. It is termed Spermvedia 

 clavus by Fries ; Sphacelia Seyetum by LeViHc? ; Ergotcztia, abortifacient 

 by Quekett; Hymenula clarus by Corda; and, lastly, Oidium aburli- 

 facien* (see Lindley, 'Medical and CEconomical Botany,' p. 14), by 

 Berkeley, who considers it analogous to the parasitic fungus so destruc- 

 tive to the vines. The spur is of variable length, from a few lines to 

 two inches, and is from two to four lines in thickness ; when large, 

 only a few grains in each ear are affected ; when small, in general all of 

 them are diseased. In colour the exterior or husk is of a bluish-black 

 or violet hue, with two or three streaks of dotted gray ; the interior is 

 of a dull whitish or gray tint. It is specifically lighter than water, 

 which affords a criterion for distinguishing sound from tainted grain. 

 When fresh it is tough and flexible, but brittle and easily pulverised 

 when dry. The powder is apt to attract moisture, which impairs it 

 properties. Time also completely dissipates its peculiar qualities. A 

 small Acarus attacks it. It is more potent in proportion to its 

 freshness. " It has a disagreeable heavy smell (which being analogous 

 to that of many fungi, strengthen* the opinion that it belongs to that 

 class of vegetable substances), a nauseous, slightly acrid taste, and 

 imparts both its taste and smell to water cand alcohol. Bread which 

 contains it is defective in firmness, liable to become moist, and eracks 

 and crumbles soon after being taken from the oven." [EaooTiN.] 



Bread prepared from grain which has a large admixture of the spur 

 occasions very distressing and often fatal effects, which are shown 

 more or less rapidly according to the quantity present in the food, and 

 the circumstances in which those who use it are placed. These effects 

 have been observed to be most serious iu seasons of scarcity, 

 when they produce dreadful disease the Raphune* of Linnaeus, 

 Cullen, and other nosologists. The symptoms which result from 

 spurred grain, when used for a considerable time, are of two distinct 

 kinds, one of a nervous nature, characterised by violent spasmodic 

 convulsions, the other a disordered state of the constitution, which 

 terminates in the peculiar disease called Gangrama ustilaginea, or dry 

 gangrene. A single dose of the spur, not diluted by admixture with 

 sour flour, excites effects which vary according to the quantity taken 

 and the state of the person, and are chieily limited to the stomach 

 and intestinal canal, if the dose be small ; but if so much as two 



3 p 



