Miscellaneous Intelligence. 135 



in the heavens. It required for their success a compensation of errors. 

 The unforeseen error of sixty years in their assumed period was com- 

 pensated by the other unforeseen error of their assumed office of the 

 planet. If both of them had committed only one theoretical error, (not 

 then, but now believed to be such,) they would, according to Prof. 

 Peirce'a computations, have agreed in pointing the telescope in the 

 wrong direction, and Neptune might have been unknown for years to 

 come. Yours, respectfully, Sears C. Walker. 



Washington, June 1, 1847. 



V. Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



1. Facts in Physiological Chemistry ; by J. Liebig, (from a letter ad- 

 dressed by Baron von Liebig, to President Everett, of Harvard Uni- 

 versity.) — I ought several months since to have replied to your letter 

 communicating the interesting intelligence in relation to the action of 

 the vapor of ether. The result of your letter to me, you have doubt- 

 less seen in the European papers. The world is filled with the mag- 

 nitude of this discovery, and we are looking for the most important ap- 

 plications of it in surgical practice. It is a benefaction to suffering hu- 

 manity, when painful operations, through a medium so simple and safe, 

 can be performed with diminished pain ; and the world is most deeply 

 indebted to the man who first employed ether for this purpose. 



I have long intended to write in acknowledgment of your friendly 

 ,et ter; but I desired by way of return to incorporate in reply the re- 

 sults of an investigation, which has been brought to a conclusion only 

 within the last few days. It is a chemical investigation of muscle-flesh ; 

 m which I have been led to some interesting results. 



The fluid in the meat of recently slaughtered animals— the flesh-fluid 

 ps sour and contains two free acids, whose nature up to this time has 

 be en but imperfectly known. I have found that one of the acids is an 

 or ganic acid, and is the same that appears in the process of the sour- 

 ln g of milk. The other acid is phosphoric acid. Both acids are but 

 Partially free. A part is united to potash, magnesia and lime. They 

 h *ve been recognized in all muscle-flesh thus far examined, as well of 

 carnivorous as of herbivorous animals. . . 



A second ingredient, which I have found in all kinds of flesh is a 

 crystalline body, which was discovered in broth byChevreul, eleven 

 years ago, and described by him under the name Creatine It was 

 Su PPosed, inasmuch as Berzelius could find nothing in the fluid express- 

 * d from flesh, that this was an accidental ingredient But this opinion 

 «*ted upon an error. Creatine is found in the flesh of all healthy 



animals. 



The composition of the body is such that creatine may be ^garded 

 J * compound of the body, Glycocoll-so accurately studied by Mr. 



tlOrsford— -and ammnnin* 



One atom of creatine equals two atoms of glycocoll 



