Aug. 31, 1876J 



NATURE 



371 



dead membrane, by dialysis, and I found it would. These 

 facts have bearings of the most singular kind on the 

 disease albuminuria. They show, amongst other things, 

 that the presence of albumen in the renal secretion is not, 

 of necessity, a sign of structural disease of the kidney as 

 has been supposed, and they account for the anomalous 

 illustrations that are met with of temporary albuminuria 

 as a disease. The experiments explain also the cause of 

 that coagulation of the blood which occurs during those 

 exhaustive diseases, such as cholera, in which the saline 

 and watery parts of the blood are drained away. 



The same line of research suggested to me a new 

 experimental reading, conducted by experiment on dead 

 animal matter, of the cause of the pectous change 

 called, commonly, coagulation. This change I find is 

 always produced in fluids containing soluble crystal- 

 loidail matter, colloidal matter, and water, whenever 

 the relationship between the colloid and the water 

 is disturbed by modification of the crystalloid. The 

 crystalloid forms the connecting link by which the water 

 is held in fluid combination with the colloid. If the crys- 

 talloid be withdrawn, then the molecular attraction of the 

 colloid for its own parts commences, and the contraction 

 called coagulation is set up with expulsion of water from 

 the clot by the contraction of cohesion. If, on the other 

 hand, crystalloid be added in excess, so as to absorb an 

 excess of water, coagulation is also set up. Or again, if 

 water held by condensation in a saline solution of a col- 

 loid — as the fibrine is held in the living blood for ex- 

 ample — be allowed to escape, coagulation is the result. 



Connected with these studies, but carried out long 

 before them, are some experiments I made with urea, in 

 which, by hypodermic injection of that animal salt, in free 

 quantities, into the body of an animal, symptoms of un- 

 consciousness and convulsion, like the symptoms of 

 uraemic poisoning which occur in some cases of scarlet 

 fever, were induced. The result to practice from these 

 researches was to discover that the symptoms were re- 

 movable by the abstraction of a little blood, and the 

 application of this practice in examples of uraemia in 

 man, has been the means of directly saving several lives. 

 The result to physiological science was the fact that when 

 from any circumstance the living blood is charged with a 

 soluble saline body much beyond what is natural, the 

 effect is a convulsion which recurs at intervals, as if the 

 blood surcharged with the salt were conducting some 

 exciting current to the muscles so rapidly that the reserve 

 store of force in the nervous centres ran down or was com- 

 pletely discharged at once and had to wait to be re-sup- 

 plied, at the end of each discharge, before another convul- 

 sion could be excited. 



Dilution of the Blood and Feeding by the Veins. 



In two great epidemics of cholera which I observed, it 

 was impossible not to see that the cause of rapid death 

 was, in most cases, the sudden reduction of the amount 

 of water in the body. In some instances where all con- 

 sciousness appeared to have passed away and death was 

 declared, the recurrence of movements in the limbs of the 

 apparently dead, suggested that in the strict sense of the 

 word there was remaining life. In some instances the effect 

 of injecting saline solutions into the veins had such an 

 astounding temporary effect in bringing back the con- 

 sciousness, it seemed as if we had in our hands a sure 

 remedy, if we knew how to use it, for the worst forms of 

 the fearful malady. The practice led me to experiment 

 on the possibility of introducing water into the body by 

 other channels than the veins, so that it.might be gradu- 

 ally absorbed and might re-supply what was being lost by 

 the watery discharges from the bowels. I therefore, in 

 1854, injected distilled water into the cellular tissue of 

 anaesthetised animals subcutaneously, and also into the 

 peritoneal cavity. The difficulty of introducing any suffi- 

 cient quantity into the cellular tissue prevented that 



method from being followed ; but with the peritoneum it 

 was different. Into the peritoneal cavity I found not only 

 that water, at the temperature of the body, can be intro- 

 duced, through a hollow needle, without any danger what- 

 ever, but that the fluid is rapidly absorbed, and may be 

 absorbed until as much as amounts to the fifth part of the 

 weight of the animal is introduced into the organism. The 

 difficulty I encountered in bringing into practice this simple 

 means of re-supplying the body with water in cholera, 

 lay in the fear that was expressed respecting injuries to 

 the peritoneum. The plan was nevertheless once tried in 

 a hopeless case in the human subject in 1854, and with 

 perfect success in promoting recovery. At the present 

 time, with our improved instruments for injection, and 

 better knowledge of operations on the 'peritoneum, the 

 method would be certainly applied in another outbreak of 

 acute cholera, and I believe with most successful results. 

 Beyond the directly practical, physiology gained a point 

 by these researches. The experiments showed that when 

 the blood is diluted by the addition of water, beyond a 

 fifth of the weight of the animal, i.e., by the addition of a 

 pound of water to the blood of an animal weighing five 

 pounds, an unconscious condition of the body is in- 

 duced, with sleep, with paralysis of muscle, with reduc- 

 tion of temperature, and with death, if the natural balance 

 be not'quickly restored. Still further by pursuing the in- 

 vestigation into a comparison of the specific weight of 

 the blood, and the specific weight of a fluid excretion 

 such as the urine, I found that in some forms of serous 

 dropsy attended with a very low specific weight of the 

 fluid excretions, the blood when reduced in specific weight 

 approaching to the specific weight of the secretions, is 

 thrown out with the utmost ease into the serous cavities 

 by the pressure of the circulation, is not returned by the 

 osmotic ingoing current back into the circulating channels, 

 and so accumulates in the serous sacs, giving rise to the 

 phenomenon of serous dropsy. 



Experimentation on the Action of Alcohol. 



A very large number of my researches by experimenta- 

 tion have had reference to the action of medicines or of 

 chemical substances intended to be applied as foods or 

 as medicines to the animal body. Some of these, such as 

 chloroform, methylene-bichloride, and nitrite of amyl, 

 have already been noticed, but they are a small number 

 compared with all that have been physiologically investi- 

 gated. By subjecting animals of different species to the 

 action of alcohol, I made clear what had only been sur- 

 mised previously, that alcohol reduces the animal tem- 

 perature. I also found that, like nitrite of amyl, alcohol 

 produces what is called its stimulant action, by paralysing 

 the vessels of the minute circulation. By the same course 

 of experiment I learned that the exposure of an animal 

 to a degree of cold that is perfectly harmless when the 

 animal is free of alcohol, is certainly fatal when the 

 animal is narcotised from the action of alcohoL By pur- 

 suing the research so as to include in it the heavier 

 alcohols, such as butylic alcohol and amylic alcohol (fusel 

 oil), I learned for the first time that the more injurious 

 effects of some of the common alcoholic diinks sold for 

 the uses of man are due to these exceedingly poisonous 

 compounds ; and by observing the action of alcohol, 

 when the action is long- continued, on the visceral organs, 

 the various organic changes it specifically engenders, in- 

 dependently of all other coincidental causes of disease, 

 were accurately determined. In a word, all my researches 

 of a physiological kind on the action of alcohol, from 

 which so much has been gathered in respect to the 

 utter uselessness and the great harmfulness of that potent 

 poison, have been made from observation of its effects 

 on the inferior animals. Its effects in reducing tempera- 

 ture, in reducing vascular tension, in reducing muscular 

 power, in destroying the action of the animal mem- 

 branes, in impairing the structures of vital organs, could 



