86 IMMEDIATE PRINCIPLES OF THE TISSUES. 



secretions before specified. From the rest and this is its most im- 

 portant use the various tissues are mainly, if not entirely, deve- 

 loped and nourished. It is, therefore, emphatically the pabulum of 

 the tissues, 1 and in them becomes musculine, osteine, cartilageine, 

 &c., as it is assimilated, in the process of nutrition, to the peculiar 

 organic matter of muscle, bone, cartilage, and the other tissues. 

 From it, also, the fibrine of the blood is probably formed. 



Albumen, therefore, leaves the organism 1. In the secretions 

 specified. 2. In the effete matters resulting from the metamorphosis 

 of the tissues to which it has been assimilated ; e. g. in the form of 

 creatine, creatinine, urea, uric acid, &c. 



Remarks. 1. Albumen is detected, if present, in urine by heat 

 and nitric acid. (See fourth paragraph, p. 84.) 



2. Styptics act by coagulating albumen as tannic acid, acetate 

 of lead, sulphate of copper, &c. ; all these being also astringents. 

 ( 4.) The fibrine of the blood coagulates spontaneously on leaving 

 the vessels. 



3. The brain and spinal cord are hardened after death, by alco- 

 hol, creasote, nitric acid. &c. Hence these fluids are used in pre- 

 serving anatomical specimens. ( 7, p. 84.) 



4. A solution of acetate of lead, applied to an ulcer of the cornea, 

 may produce a permanent opacity. ( 6.) 



5. Albumen is an antidote to corrosive sublimate ; the white of 

 one egg neutralizing four grains of this poison. Peschier. ( 6.) 



6. The sulphur combined with albumen is in an un oxidized 

 state. Hence a boiled egg blackens silver, a sulphuret of silver 

 being formed. Pus often blackens a silver probe for a similar 

 reason. 



7. Do the nitric and sulphuric acids check the discharges in diar- 

 rhcea.and cholera, by coagulating albumen? 



Pathological Relations. In pathological states of the secreting or- 



fans, albumen may exist in almost any secretion, as saliva, gastric 

 uid, bile, mucus, &c. Mucous membranes may appear to secrete 

 albumen in addition to the ordinary mucous corpuscles, when abnor- 

 mally excited. (Jul. Vogel.) But, in all these cases, transudation, in 

 addition to secretion, has occurred. Hence the presence of albumen 

 in a fluid resembling pus is no evidence of true pus, or that it pro- 

 ceeded from a granulating surface. 



1 For the grounds of this assertion, see chapter on the " Histological Relations of 

 the Blood." 



