BLOOD. 353 



In 1801, the Systeme des Connoissances Chimiques, by Four- 

 croy, was published. In the ninth volume of that work there 

 is a long account of the chemical properties of blood,* which ? 

 though it contained no new investigations, yet must have been of 

 advantage to chemists, by exhibiting in one view all that had pre- 

 viously been done on the subject. 



In the year 1806, Berzelius published the first volume of his 

 Animal Chemistry. In it he gives an account of the chemical con- 

 stitution of the blood, so far as it was known when he wrote, 

 chiefly from Fourcroy ; at least the statements are similar to those 

 of that chemist, and Berzelius seems to have made no experi- 

 ments. But the second volume of his Animal Chemistry appear- 

 ed in 1808. To this volume he prefixed an introduction of fifty - 

 nine pages, in which he gives a minute account of a laborious 

 set of experiments on blood, which he had made in the interval 

 between the publication of the two volumes. In this introduc- 

 tion, he gives a minute account of the chemical properties of al- 

 bumen, colouring matter, smdjibrin, and made the first analysis of 

 blood. This analysis, considering the state of our chemical know- 

 ledge of the subject before it appeared, is remarkably accurate, and 

 does great credit to the industry and sagacity of the author of it. 



In the year 1812, an ingenious set of experiments on the blood 

 and some other animal fluids was published by Mr Brande.f He 

 showed that the red colour of the blood was not owing to phos- 

 phate of iron, as Fourcroy and Vauquelin had asserted, but to a 

 peculiar animal matter, as had been previously maintained by 

 Dr Wells. Mr Brande proved also that what had previously 

 been taken for gelatin in the serosity of the blood was in reality 

 albumen held in solution by an excess of soda. The absence of 

 gelatin had been previously discovered by Berzelius ; but the Ani- 

 mal Chemistry of that chemist having been published in the Swe- 

 dish language, was unknown to Mr Brande till after the publica- 

 tion of his memoir. 



Rather before Mr Brande's paper an elaborate and remarka- 

 bly exact analysis of the serum of the blood was published by 

 Dr Marcet.J He turned his chief attention to the saline ingre- 

 dients of blood, and his results agreed remarkably well with those 

 of Berzelius upon the same subject. 



* It occupies sixty pages of the English translation. 



t Phil. Trans. 1812, p. 90. 



| Medico- Chirurgical Transactions, ii. 370. 



Z 



