CHAP, vi.] OF LIVING LIQUIDS. 63 



ence to urine, a pure affair of alimentation. It is to the basic 

 phosphate of soda and to the carbonate of soda that the blood 

 owes its alkaline reaction. 



M. Ch. Robin l remarks that the different salts of the blood 

 serve as mutual solvents, and that the phosphates and carbonates 

 of soda permit the sanguineous liquid to dissolve a great quantity 

 of carbonic acid. In the economy, in effect, the blood is never 

 saturated with carbonic acid. Venous blood brought into contact 

 with carbonic acid, still suffices to dissolve thereof O mg> 48 in 100. 

 Thus it always seeks this gas eagerly, and is ready to disengage 

 therefrom the anatomical elements. 



We must cite, by way of remembrance, traces of silica, of 

 manganese of lead, of copper, fortuitous mineral elements, little 

 or not at all useful to nutrition, but drawn along with the others 

 into the living organisms. It is otherwise with iron, which 

 seems to play an important part, to form a really constituent 

 portion of the sanguineous globules, though it exists in a very 

 small quantity, for the total quantity of iron in the blood of an 

 adult man is reckoned to be not more than one gramme. 2 



Other salts, the salts of soda, of potash, of lime, belong like 

 the preceding to the immediate principles of the second class. 

 They are organic salts, nutritive wastes. Let us mention the 

 urates and inosates of soda, of potash, and so on, which probably 

 result from the disassimilation of the muscular tissue, &c. 



But the disassimilation of the anatomical elements gives birth 

 to many other principles more complex, more organical, to sorts 

 of alkaloids. These crystallisable principles, always in a state 

 of liberty in the blood, are urea, creatinine, creatine, inosite. 

 There has been an attempt to determine the place of origin of 

 these diverse products. It is said that creatine and creatinine 

 come from the muscles, urea from the tissues, fibrous, laminous, 



serous. 3 







1 Ch. Robin, Des Humeurs. 



2 A French gramme is nearly equivalent to nineteen grains English. 

 Translator. * G. See, Du Sany et dcsaiUmies. 



