84 ON ANIMAL MATTER. 



milky color. Some insects, particularly the ant, are found to 

 contain an acid juice, which approaches nearly to the nature 

 of vegetable acid. There are, however, sundry animal juices 

 which differ greatly, even in these kinds of properties, from 

 the corresponding ones of vegetables. Thus animal serum, 

 which appears analogous to vegetable, gummy juices, has this 

 remarkable difference, that though it mingles uniformly with 

 cold or warm water, yet, on heating the mixture, the animal 

 matters separate from the watery fluid, and concrete into a 

 solid mass. 



Some have been of opinion, that this heat of the animal 

 body, in certain diseases, might rise to such a degree as to 

 produce this dangerous concretion of the serous humors ; 

 yet the heat requisite for this effect is greater than the sys- 

 tem seems capable of sustaining. The soft and fluid parts of 

 animals run quickly into putrefaction ; at least, much quicker 

 than vegetable matter, and when corrupted, prove more offen- 

 sive. This process takes place, in some degree, in the bodies 

 of living animals ; as often as the juices stagnate long, or are 

 prevented by an obstruction of the natural outlets from throw- 

 ing off the more volatile and corruptible parts. During 

 putrefaction a quantity of air is generated, all the humors 

 become gradually thinner, and the fibrous parts more lax and 

 tender ; hence the distention which succeeds the induration 

 of any of the viscera, or the imprudent suppression of dysen- 

 teries by astringents. The crassamentum of human blood, 

 as well as that of quadrupeds, changes, by putrefaction, into a 

 dark livid color, a few drops of which tinge the serum with 

 a tawny hue, like the ichor of sores and dysenteric fluxes ; 

 as also the white of the eye, the saliva, the serum of blood 

 drawn from a vein, &c. The putrid crassamentum changes 

 a large quantity of recent urine to a flame-colored water, so 

 common in diseases where febrile symptoms are present. 

 The mixture, after standing an hour or two, gathers a cloud 

 resembling what is seen in the crude water of acute distem- 

 pers, with some oily matter on the surface, like the scum 

 which floats on scorbutic urine. The serum of the blood 



