ITS ODOUR. 213 



volume of blood with lj of acid. Barruel* believed that he had 

 ascertained that the blood of every kind of animal possesses its 

 own peculiar odorous principle, and stands in a definite relation 

 with the odour of the cutaneous and pulmonary transpiration. 

 These and several other opinions of Barruel, having reference to 

 medico-legal investigation, have not been altogether confirmed. 

 They have been submitted to a very careful experimental criticism 

 by Schmidt, t who found that the peculiar odour was evolved in 

 an urimistakeable manner by the blood of the goat, the sheep, and 

 the cat, while the odour which was developed from the blood of 

 other animals did not possess a distinctly specific character. 



According to Barruel, the odorous principle of the blood is 

 more distinct in the male than in the female sex in every species of 

 animal ; as, moreover, it may be developed from the serum, it would 

 appear to pertain to that portion of the blood. Further, the 

 manner in which this odour is developed, indicates that we are 

 here dealing with volatile acids which belong, or at all events are 

 closely allied to the butyric acid group. 



The general remarks which we have made regarding the 

 analysis of the animal fluids, especially apply to the analysis of the 

 blood. The shortest possible critical review of the different modes 

 that have been adopted for analysing the blood, will fully confirm 

 the truth of those observations. 



One of the most important deficiencies in the analysis is 

 obviously connected with the circumstance that the primary and 

 most important physiological question, namely, the quantitative 

 relation between the fresh blood-corpuscles (with their moist con- 

 tents) and the plasma belonging to them, cannot be answered in the 

 present state of analytical chemistry. We must hence rest satisfied 

 with determining, at all events approximatively,the solid, coagulable 

 and insoluble constituents of the blood-corpuscles ; we say approxi- 

 mately, for even the methods of determining the insoluble matters 

 of the blood-cells have in part only a relative value ; their quantity 

 is usually not directly found, but calculated from several determi- 

 nations; moreover, the originator of every indirect method of 

 determining the blood-corpuscles must admit that his method 

 never can give a perfectly correct result, even for hypothetically 

 dry blood-cells, since it is impossible to declare, by any of these 

 indirect methods, how much of the constituents of the serum 



* Ann. d'Hygiene publique. No. 6. 1829. 



t Diagnostik verdachtiger Flecke in Criminalf alien. Mitau u. Leipzig, 

 1848, S. 19. t 



