Chemical Physiology and Pathology. 535 



proteine only in definite proportions to form new combinations, 

 and that there are no indefinite intermediate compounds, we 

 can conceive that a certain quantity of oxygen, instead of 

 gradually penetrating a quantity of proteine by its normal 

 stages of vital manifestations and decomposition, may seize at 

 once on a larger quantity of it, and so raise it to the extreme 

 of vital activity. This excess of oxidation the chemists 

 attribute only to fever and to inflammation. In diseased 

 processes of such a nature, a greater quantity of oxygen is 

 consumed, than the body has to yield for the purposes of life. 

 This misproportion of matter to be excreted, which is only 

 got rid of in the form of urine, (in which it is most easily eli- 

 minated,) constitutes the materia peccans of disease. 



In inflammation an increase in the fibrine of the blood has 

 been observed, and its origin has been ascribed to the albumen 

 of the blood, 1 atom of whose sulphur is supposed to be 

 converted into sulphuric acid : the inflammatory crust too is 

 considered to be formed of fibrine. Mulder describes it as a 

 hydrate of two stages of the oxidation of proteine, its binoxide 

 and tritoxide; (epidermose and albuminose of Bouchardat). 

 Thus the albumen, when it meets with the oxygen, does not 

 form a binoxide, but a tritoxide at once : fibrine, on the 

 other hand, easily assumes oxygen from the air even at the 

 common temperature, and can undergo either of the stages 

 of oxidation. The oxidation of proteine becomes only by 

 its excess a pathological phgenomenon, for it occurs in healthy 

 blood also. The oxidation takes place in the lungs by means 

 of the oxygen which is inspired. An abnormal increase 

 of the oxidation of proteine can therefore only happen, 

 when by rapid cooling of the inspired air, a greater quantity 

 of oxygen than usual is introduced into the circulation, or 

 when through any cause the number of inspirations exceeds 

 the normal one, or the circulation of the blood is accelerated. 

 As we may consider the gelatine- yielding substances to be 

 more advanced stages of the oxidation of proteine, and the 



