1864.] 



artificially formed from Albumen, 



353 



When hydrogen was passed through serum, after the lapse of a day or 

 two a tough elastic product was obtained. 



In experiments tried by passing hydrogen through albumen greatly 

 diluted with water, I found, after the lapse of a few days, a flocculent de- 

 posit very similar in appearance to the deposit of mucus which often 

 takes place when urine is allowed to stand a short time. This point, how- 

 ever, requires further investigation. I tried also the effect of passing 

 hydrogen through a portion of intestine inserted into an albuminous fluid. 

 I have not as yet been able to form either the dense hard or viscid frothy 

 substance by this method. I repeated the experiment for the formation of 

 fibrin from albumen, by decomposing the water of its composition by elec- 

 tricity. I must admit this is the most difficult, troublesome, and unsa- 

 tisfactory of all the methods I have employed. I find that the great ten- 

 dency of the poles to form different substances on them, and the great rapi- 

 dity with which they grow together, lead, without the greatest care, to 

 the belief that two difi^erent substances, differing only in density, are formed 

 at one and the same pole, so intimately blended are they together. Thus I 

 was led to believe at first sight that a dense hard substance was formed at 

 the oxygen end, and not until I had repeated the experiment many times 

 did I discover that the substance belonged to the hydrogen and not to 

 the oxygen pole, and had grown across from one pole to the other. 



I have obtained on several occasions fibrin and chondrin at the same 

 time by conducting hydrogen and oxygen derived by the decomposition of 

 water by voltaic electricity through separate tubes. The oxygen passed 

 into slightly acid albumen formed fibrin ; the hydrogen passed into alkaline 

 albumen formed either the chondrin or else the frothy and viscid material. 

 The temperature was kept up at 98° F. in these experiments. On one 

 occasion, however, I happened accidentally to reverse the current (that 

 is to say, the hydrogen was passed into the acid, and the oxygen into the 

 alkaline albumen), when no chondrin or fibrin was formed. 



The following conclusions I have arrived at after the study of the in- 

 fluence which oxygen and hydrogen gases exert upon albumen when sub- 

 mitted to their action separately at a temperature of 98° F., the normal 

 temperature of the living body. Albumen under the action of oxygen 

 forms, after the lapse of a longer or shorter period, fibrin. The fibrin thus 

 artificially produced is of three distinct varieties, viz., 1st, the granular 

 form ; 2nd, a form allied to lymph incapable of being unravelled into 

 fibrils ; lastly, the true fibrillated fibrin. The law which appears to regu- 

 late the state into which the albumen is converted, as far as my observa- 

 tion has gone, is one of molecular aggregation, similar to the electric 

 deposit of metals, as the slower the fibrin is formed the more organized 

 is it in substance. 



I have observed that when fibrin is rapidly formed it is almost always 

 produced in the granular state ; this is particularly the case with fibrin 



