536 . Chemical Physiology and Pathology. 



false membranes partly yield gelatine, and partly have the 

 composition of inflammatory exudations, the formation of the 

 plastic products of inflammations becomes in some degree 

 intelligible. In inflammation the oxidation of proteine is 

 increased on its surface, but not in its depth, and therefore 

 the compounds of proteine which are consumed, quit the 

 body in an imperfectly excrementitious form, and are re- 

 cognisable especially in the urine (as great quantities of 

 uric or hippuric acid, oxalic or lactic acid, when the urea 



diminishes in quantity) and in the perspiration. In 



disease a compound of proteine quits the body either unal- 

 tered, or in an imperfectly excrementitious state, in larger 

 quantity than usual, or is at least kept beyond the influence 

 of the ordinary vital actions. Thus, compounds of proteine 

 are found in excretions, in which they do not occur under 

 usual circumstances (as albumen in colliquative diseases in 

 the urine, the perspiration, and the excrement,) or they be- 

 come deposited in a place, where they are uncomfortable or 

 dangerous to the organism, and are more or less removed from 

 the influence of the natural processes of transformation, (as 

 pus, tubercle, scrofula, carcinoma, hypertrophy, &c). The 

 physiologists indeed agree pretty generally with the chemists 

 on this head, that the abnormal chemical products, excretions, 

 and deposits, as well as the primary elements of diseased swell- 

 ings, exudations, and false membranes, differ from normal 

 ones, only in their abnormal situation ; and when in a state of 

 complete chemical and organic development, some such de- 

 posits can at times be removed by the application of substances 

 which hasten the transformation of matter (as culinary salt in 

 scrofula) and which subject the deposits afresh to the influence 

 of transmutation. Others obstinately resist every attempt of 

 this kind, and fall (like carcinoma and tubercle) into a state of 

 chemical destruction, that involves the harmony of the whole 



organism. Bence Jones, a disciple of Liebig, refers the 



materia peccans of the diseases just named, to the abnormal 





