156 THE FLUIDS. 



f 



blood-corpuscles in the serum (p. 50). The phosphate of lime is 

 indispensable for the formation of bone. The /ate are also required 

 for the development of adipose tissue, and the formation of all the 

 fluids containing fat (p. 77); while the other principles of the 

 second class, as urea, creatine, creatinine, &c., result from the dis- 

 assimilation of the tissues, and are to be eliminated from the blood, 

 in the excretions, as effete materials. 



In regard to the uses of albumen and fibrine, it is generally 

 asserted by authors that the former exists in the blood principally 

 as the material from which the fibrine is formed, though it also 

 becomes solidified in certain organs (especially the nervous centres), 

 and forms a part of the serous secretions and the transudations ; 

 while the fibrine is the only plastic or organizable element in the 

 liquor sanguinis, and, therefore, the one from which all the tissues 

 are formed. 



But in the first place, it is impossible that any single immediate 

 principle can be the source of all the tissues, since all of the latter 

 consist of several of these principles combined. The phosphate and 

 carbonate of lime are as indispensable in the formation of bone as 

 is the organic substance which unites with them, whether it be 

 formed from fibrine or albumen. Hence, also, both albumen and 

 fibrine naturally have these salts and some others always associated 

 with them (pp. 84 and 90). So far as this point is concerned, therefore, 

 albumen may be a plastic element as well as fibrine ; and it occurs 

 at once as improbable that all the tissues can be developed and 

 nourished from an element constituting only about 3^3 part (Leh- 

 mann) of the blood, while another similar immediate principle ex- 

 ists in at least twenty times ("nearly twenty times" Lehmann) that 

 amount. But we proceed to examine the grounds of the view 

 usually entertained. 



1. The tissues are said to be developed and nourished from 

 fibrine only, because all plastic exudations contain fibrine. If this 

 were true, we might also remember that they also contain albumen. 

 But Lehmann asserts that plastic exudations are sometimes entirely 

 deficient in fibrine. 1 Fibrine, therefore, cannot be the only organ- 

 iaable element in the liquor sanguinis, at any rate ; albumen must 

 be organizable in exudations containing no fibrine. And if so in 

 such cases, it is probably in all, for we find no exudations not 



1 Physiological Chemistry, vol. ii. p. 290. 



