86 PROPERTIES OF 



of this white serum being kept some days, putrefied, and when 

 putrid, it jellied as milk does when become sour ; but it dif- 

 fered from milk, in being extremely fetid. 



Now, as the white globules appear from these experiments 

 to be of an oily nature, and as it is improbable, from these pa- 

 tients having taken little food, and from the transparency of 

 the chyle in birds, that this whiteness of the serum should be 

 owing to unassimilated chyle, accumulated in the blood-vessels ; 

 we must therefore believe it to be owing to some other cause. 

 And as we know there is a considerable quantity of oil laid up 

 in the cellular substance of animals, which is occasionally re- 

 absorbed is it not most probable that this curious appearance 

 was, in the above-mentioned cases, owing to such a reabsorp- 

 tion ? And as all these patients had symptoms of a plethora, 



gruel, Dr. Traill could detect no oil. Dr. Bostock 1 obtained similar 

 negative results from an examination of turbid and cream-like serum in 

 cases of dropsy with albuminous urine ; it was in this disease that Dr. 

 Christison referred the cloudiness of the serum to the presence of 

 oily matter. Dr. R. D. Thomson found the white matter oily in one 

 of Dr. Buchanan's cases, and in another not so. In a case of anasarca, 

 Mr. Ancell u observed the serum in the highest degree turbid, but not 

 milky. I have seen three specimens of turbid whitish serum in the 

 human subject, in which the opake matter sunk in water, was not at all 

 soluble in ether, and appeared irregularly granular under the micro- 

 scope, resembling coagulated albumen, but quite unlike chylous or 

 fatty matter. 



In Dr. Benjamin Babington's observations/ the specific gravity (see 

 Note xxn) of the milk-like serum appeared to be so regularly reduced, 

 as to lead him to believe that the oil exists at the expense of the albumen. 

 There are some facts in favour of the idea that albumen may be converted 

 into oil. The rapid disappearance of the matter of the curd of perfectly 

 fresh salmon, with the subsequent more oily state of this fish, may be 

 owing to a conversion of this kind, according to the conjecture of Sir 

 Humphrey Davy, as I have learnt from Dr. Davy. I have observed that 

 the oil in the liver of several fishes increases after death, probably in 

 connexion with incipient putrefaction ; and Dr. Davy informs me that in 

 the liver of the cod, after it had been kept in a damp place for twenty- 

 five days, he found a small increase of oil, with a formation of ammonia 

 and carbonic acid at the same time. Perhaps, as Dr. Babington suggests 

 to me, there may be a conversion of vegetable albumen into oil, in olives, 

 after they have been heaped up and subjected to fermentation ; by which 

 the quantity of oil is said to be increased, though its quality is not so good. 



I Dr. Bright's Reports of Med. Cases, v Cyclopaedia of Anat. and Physiol. i, 



4to, i, 83. 423. 



II Lectures on the Blood, Lancet, vol. i, 



1839-40, p. 607. 



