ONE DISCOVERY LEADS TO ANOTHER. 137 



the paramount necessity for the formation of special markets 

 for foreign cattle, so that these should never come in contact 

 with British animals. Failing in these attempts, my attention 

 was naturally directed to some means whereby carcasses of 

 animals might be imported ready for the butcher from any 

 part of the world ; and I was induced by some friends, who 

 promised pecuniary aid, to embark in my new work. In 

 January, 1866, I made the first considerable series of experi- 

 ments on the feeding of animals with peculiar products, so as 

 to render the flesh much less perishable, and some remarkable 

 results were obtained with oak-bark. I soon found that the 

 (vhole problem was a chemical one, and I allied with myself 

 my brother, Dr. Arthur Gamgee, whose labors in physiological 

 chemistry had peculiarly fitted him for such researches. In 

 September, 1866, my brother was casually explaining results 

 of some experiments on the action of gases on the blood, and 

 especially of carbonic oxide, without reference to meat-preser- 

 vation, and I at once saw that this gas must fulfil some of the 

 conditions desired of preservatives. Prof. Claude Bernard liad 

 drawn attention to the uniformly florid, arterial color of the 

 blood of animals poisoned by carbonic oxide gas. This blood 

 which would absorb 8.2 per cent, of oxygen from the air, before 

 the action upon it of carbonic oxide, was only capable of absorb- 

 ing 1.66 per cent, after the action of the gas, and this Bernard 

 attributed to some action of the poisonous gas on the blood 

 corpuscles. Lothar Meyer, working under the direction of 

 Bunsen, was led to the conclusion that for every volume of 

 carbonic oxide absorbed by blood there is one volume of oxygen 

 expelled, and was led to the induction, which he has since 

 shown to be correct, that the blood contains a substance which 

 has the power of forming a definite chemical compound either 

 with oxygen or carbonic oxide, a molecule of the one gas being 

 able to replace a molecule of the other. Dr. Hoppe has shown 

 that the blood of animals poisoned by carbonic oxide, besides 

 being possessed of a remarkably florid color, when mixed with 

 its own volume, or twice its own volume, of strong caustic soda, 

 (of sp. gr. 1.3,) and well shaken, gave a coagulum of red color, 

 which, when drawn over porcelain, left streaks of a cinnabar 

 red color, whilst normal blood, treated in the same way, yields 

 a black, mucilaginous mass. Hoppe discovered that peculiar 

 18 



