298 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



6. On some New Researches in Animal Chemistry, (extracted from 

 a letter from Professor Liebig to Dr. A. W. Hofmann, Phil. Mag., 

 xxx, 412, June, 1847.) — I am at present occupied with the investigation 

 of the constituents of the animal fluids which are found without the 

 blood and lymphatic vessels. The fluid from flesh, for example, re- 

 acts strongly acid, and the question was, whence arose this acidity? 

 After overcoming more difficulties than I have ever experienced in any 

 investigation, I have for the first time indisputably proved that free 

 lactic and phosphoric acid exist in the whole organism wherever muscle 

 is found. How curious, that in the absence of all proofs on the part of 

 the opponents of lactic acid, I should now demonstrate to them its ex- 

 istence in the flesh of oxen, fowls, calves, and sheep, by preparing and 

 analyzing the most beautifully crystallized zinc and lime salts! How 

 wonderful, that in the animal organism, acids and alkalies are found 

 separated by a membrane, constituting myriads of little galvanic circles, 

 which, as such, must produce chemical and electrical effects ! io the 

 latter class I refer all the observations of Matteucci, which can now be 

 easily explained. 



I have further found that the flesh of the muscles of oxen, fowls, 

 sheep, calves, and the carnivorous pike, contain creatin, prepared by 

 Chevreul eleven years ago, and which, from Berzelius's not being able 

 to reproduce it, has since then, in a measure, disappeared from the 

 field of science. Creatin is a beautiful substance, having the formula 

 CgNgH^Og. At the temperature of 100° C. it loses 2 equivs. of water, 

 and becomes C 8 N 3 H 9 4 = glycocoll -f ammonia or caffein -f amid- 

 ogen and water. Heated in a stream of hydrochloric acid, creatin loses 

 four equivs. of water and takes up one of hydrochloric acid. By this 

 treatment, however, its nature is entirely altered, being now converted 

 into a beautiful organic base, the properties of which are totally differ- 

 ent from those of creatin. It becomes now soluble in water, and forms 

 with bichlorid of platinum a fine crystallized double salt. 



I have, finally, discovered two other new bodies in the same fluids, 

 of which one crystallizes in needles, the other in plates of the lustre of 

 mother-of-pearl. Unfortunately, I have obtained scarcely sufficient lor 

 two analyses from forty lbs. of the flesh of oxen and twenty of that ot 

 fowls. 



I see a boundless field before me, and doubt not that for every jwgf 

 of the animal body, something which can be estimated quanliiah^h 

 will also be discovered to which it is indebted for its properties. 



I have also satisfied myself as to the part which common salt p a ) 

 in the bodies of animals. * I have found that the fluids without the blew 

 and lymphatic vessels contain only potash-salts, viz. chlorid of P°* 

 sium and phosphate of potash, with phosphate of magnesia, whilst 

 blood and lymph contain merely those of soda, (phosphate of so aj 

 If, therefore, the latter are indispensable to the formation of bio od a .^ 

 the processes of life, it is evident that an animal on the continent, w i 

 finds in plants only potash-salts, should have chlorid of so ^ um S^^t 

 it, by means of which the phosphate of potash of the seeds and the ^ 

 of the plant is transformed into chlorid of potassium and phospha ^ 

 soda. I found further that the salt brine which flows from salted 0^ 

 contained certainly alkaline phosphates, and that scurvy is hence ea 



