60 PHILOSOPHICAL TKANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1750. 



Other hand, though they were really antiseptic, yet if the humours are disposed 

 to corrupt from excess of heat or motion, these very salts, by adding to the cause, 

 may augment the disease. So that, on the whole, it will be the fairest criterion 

 of the nature of these volatiles, to inquire, whether out of the body they accele- 

 rate or retard putrefaction. 



In order to decide this question. Dr. P. made repeated experiments of joining 

 both the spirit and salt of hartshorn to various animal substances ; and had con- 

 stantly found, that so far from promoting putrefaction, they have evidently hin- 

 dered it ; and that with a power proportioned to their quantity. The trials have 

 been made with the serum of the blood, and also with the crassamentum, after 

 it had been dried by keeping. He once separated the thick inflammatory' crust 

 of pleuritic blood from the rest of the mass ; and dividing it, he put one portion 

 into distilled vinegar, the other into spirit of hartshorn ; and after keeping the 

 infusions above a month in the middle of summer, he found the piece which lay 

 in alkaline spirit as sound as that in the acid. Another time he put in one phial 

 about H oz of an equal mixture of ox's gall and water, with 100 drops of spirit 

 of hartshorn ; and in another as much of the gall and water without any spirit. 

 The phials, being corked, were set by a fire, so as to receive about the degree 

 of animal heat ; by which in less than 2 days, the mixture without the spirit be- 

 came putrid, but the other was not only then, but after 2 days longer, un- 

 tainted. 



He afterwards infused 2 drs. of the lean of beef with 2 oz. of water and J- a 

 dr. of salt of hartshorn. Another phial contained as much flesh and water, with 

 a double quantity of sea-salt : in a 3d was the flesh and water only, to serve by 

 way of index. These phials were placed on a lamp-furnace, in a heat varying be- 

 tween 94 and 104 degrees of Fahrenheit's scale. About 18 hours after infusion 

 the contents of that phial which served as an index, were rank; and in a few 

 hours more that with the sea-salt was also putrid ; but the flesh with the volatile 

 alkali was sound, and continued so after standing 24 hours longer, in the same 

 degree of heat : and that the smell of the hartshorn might occasion no decep- 

 tion, the piece of flesh was washed from the salt, and still smelled sweet. 



About the same time he took 3 pieces of fresh beef, of the same weight as 

 above ; and laying 2 of them in gallypots, he covered one with saw dust, and 

 the other with bran : but the 3d piece being strewed with salt of hartshorn 

 powdered he put into a 4-oz. phial which had a glass stopper. They were all 3 

 placed in the outside of a window exposed to the sun ; and the weather being 

 warm, on the 3d day the flesh in the gallypots began to smell ; on the 4th were 

 putrid. Next day the phial was examined ; when the flesh was washed from the 

 salt, and found quite sweet. It was then dried and salted again with hartshorn ; 

 and having stood in the house some weeks longer in sultry weather, it was looked 

 at a second time, and observed to be as sound as before ; neither was the sub- 



