30 CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS IN RELATION 



organism. In compositions ot such various nature as the organic atoms, these 

 other forces occasion a change of form and condition, when the vital force after 

 death no longer opposes their action. The same leaf, or the same grape which 

 possessed the capacity of giving off pure oxygen to the atmosphere, submits to 

 the chemical action of the oxygen from the moment of its separation from the or- 

 ganism, and its being brought in contact with the air. 



\ No organism no portion of an animal or plant is capable, jifter the extinction 

 1 of vital enprfly^ of resisting the chemical action which air and humidity exercise 

 I upon it, and its elements fall back under the unlimited dominion of chemical force. 

 ^Fermentation and putrefaction are the stages 01 its retrograde development, present- 

 ing less perfect combination, until at length the organic atoms, in consequence of 

 continuously acting unorganic forces, return to their simple original forms, in 

 which they may serve for the development and nutriment of new generations. 



FUNGI AND INFUSORIA ARE SUBJECTED TO PUTREFACTION, 

 FERMENTATION AND DESTRUCTION, 



Fungi and infusoria are organic beings with constituent parts of the same com- 

 posite nature as those of the higher orders of vegetables and animals, and we 

 observe the same phenomena in their bodies after death, as those which ac- 

 company the disappearance of all organisms, and find them in a state of putrefac- 

 tion, fermentation, and corruption ; how then is it possible to regard fungi and 

 infusoria as the causes of these processes, when they themselves become putrid, 

 fermented, and corrupt, leaving nothing but their inorganic skeletons? 



FUNGI AND INFUSORIA ARE THE ATTENDANTS, BUT NOT THE 

 ORIGINATORS OF THE PROCESS OF PUTREFACTION. 



No one will deny that fungi and infusoria are found in a great number of putre- 

 fying and corrupting substances ; but the frequency of their appearance cannot 

 possibly be adduced as a motive for regarding them as the causes, instead of the 

 attendants of these conditions. Fungi and infusoria are shown by nature, in 

 reference to their nutriment and development, to be organic atoms, which have 

 ceased to be parts or constituents of living organisms, and, in most cases, they do 

 not appear until putrefaction be established, or is complete, and the process of 

 corruption has begun. It cannot be doubted that all processes and their respective 

 products are changed by their presence, for by means of their process of nutriment 

 and respiration, they accelerate solution, limiting its baneful influence upon the 

 surrounding parts to the shortest possible period of time. 



FUNGI AND INFUSORIA HASTEN THE PROCESS OF PUTREFACTION 



AND CORRUPTION. 



If the process of putrefaction be terminated by the return of the elements of 

 organic beings into carbonic acid, and carbonate of ammonia, it is clear that the 

 period necessary to effect this conversion must be most perceptibly curtailed if the 

 putrefying agent be a plantation of infusoria, millions of whom are busily engaged 

 in leading the constituent parts of the body into a state of decomposition by means 

 of their respiratory and digestive processes. 



