THE PRINCIPLE OF VITAL AFFINITY. 821 
ferent parts more or less rapidly, as they give up their carbon more or less easily, 
is the immediate agent by which the extenuation of all is effected. 
4. We understand, certainly not completely, but better now than formerly, 
the nature of the changes which take place in animals long fed on one kind, even 
of albuminous food, equally as when albumen is withheld; and which appear 
in both cases to indicate a deficiency of the albuminous constituents of the blood ; 
and likewise, certain phenomena in disease, connected with deficiency of those 
albuminous constituents. 
There are several facts connected with such diseases which we cannot under- 
stand, until we have some farther information as to the relation to each other in 
the living body, of the different constituents of the blood which are albuminous,— 
the red globules which contain the largest portion of that matter,—the white glo- 
bules which seem to be more immediately concerned in nutrition,—the albumen 
of the serum,—and the fibrin, which is in the smallest quantity, and which differs 
from the albumen only in the peculiar (vital) attraction or aggregation among its 
particles ; and which appears to exist in the living state partly, and, according to 
ANDRAL’s observations, entirely, in the white globules above noticed. Until the 
relations of these different matters are better understood, we cannot explain how 
some of the most striking symptoms of that disease which seems to be the most 
directly produced by inadequate nourishment, viz., the Scurvy, are produced. 
But in that disease we now know that there usually is a great deficiency in the 
quantity of red globules, as well as either in the quantity or in the vital power 
of the fibrin; and we can now distinctly understand how it should happen that 
scurvy snould shew itself, both when there is a long-continued deficiency of suf- 
ficient albuminous nourishment, and likewise when the nourishment taken is too 
exclusively albuminous;—most frequently, in this last case, when it is at the same 
time salted and hardened, and difficult of solution in the gastric juice, but, like- 
Wise, as repeated experience has shewn, when it is fresh and nutritious, but 
uniform.* In the first case (exemplified in several prisons of late years), there 
is a simple deficiency of azotised nourishment ; in the other, there is a deficiency 
of the non-azotised matter which should protect this nourishment; the oxygen 
of the air thérefore acts upon it, and the chief result seems to be, that the formation 
of the globules, apparently both of red and white globules, is prevented. Both cases 
are illustrated by what happens in Bricut’s disease of the kidneys, where there 
is such a change in the vital action of these organs, that they throw off prema- 
turely much of the albumen of the blood ; the effect of which on the constitution 
of the blood is to diminish greatly all its azotised constituents, even although a full 
quantity of azotised food is taken; the specific gravity of the serum falling, and 
the proportion of the red globules to the other constituents of the blood becoming 
* See Bupp on Scurvy, in the Library of Medicine. 
VOL. XVI. PART III. 4M 
