150 



ON THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD, &c. 



tables too often supply us with instances of this fact, in dishes of roast or 

 boiled meat too long exposed to the action of the fire, and hence reduced to 

 juiceless and ragged fibres, totally devoid of nutriment, and capable of keep- 

 ing for weeks or months, without betraying- any putrefactive indication. 



In like manner, when bodies are buried beneath the hot and arid sands of 

 Egypt or Arabia, with a sultry sun shining-, almost without ceasing-, upon the 

 sandy surface, the heat hereby produced is so considerable as to raise the 

 whole of the fluids of the animal system to the cuticle, whence they are im- 

 mediately and voraciously drunk up by the bibulous sands that surround it ; 

 or, piercing their interstices, are thrown off into the atmosphere in the form 

 of insensible vapour. In consequence of which, when a body thus buried is 

 dug up a few weeks after its interment, instead of being converted into its 

 original elements, it is found changed into a natural mummy, altogether as 

 hard, and as capable of preservation as any artificial mummy, prepared with 

 the costliest septics employed on such occasions. 



When dead animal organs are deposited in situations in which only a very 

 small portion of atmospheric air is capable of having access to them, a change 

 indeed takes place, but of a very different description from that of putrefac- 

 tion, and which is of a most curious and extraordinary nature. For in such 

 cases the animal organs, instead of being converted into their original ele- 

 ments, are transmuted into fat, wax, or spermaceti ; or rather into a substance 

 sui generis, and possessing a middle nature between that of the two former, 

 whence the French chemists have given it the appellation of adipocire ; a 

 term not strictly classical, but for which the chemists of our own country 

 have not hitherto substituted any other. 



This result is observed, not unfrequently, in bodies that are drowned, and 

 rendered incapable of rising to the surface of the water; for in such a situa- 

 tion but very little air, and, consequently, very little oxygen, can reach them 

 from the external atmosphere. And it is to these circumstances we ought, 

 perhaps, to resolve the singular appearance in the body of Colonel Pollen, 

 who was wrecked a few years ago in the Baltic Sea, near Memel, and within 

 sight of the coast ; and whose corpse was six months afterward thrown on 

 shore, with the features of the face so little varied, that every one of his ac- 

 quaintance recognised him at the first glance. The body had probably been 

 entangled in the submarine sands on first sinking, and been retained in this 

 situation for months, cut off from that exposure to external air which is ab- 

 solutely necessary in all cases of putrefaction properly so called. A similar 

 conversion into wax-fat was observed also in 1786 and 1787, on opening the 

 Josses communes, or common burial pits in the churchyards of the Innocents at 

 Paris, for the purpose of laying the foundation of a new pile of buildings. 

 For the bodies that on this occasion were dug up, instead of being dissolved 

 into their elementary corpuscles, were found for the most part converted into 

 this very substance of waxy fat or adipocire. The populace were alarmed at 

 the phenomenon, and the chemists were applied to for an explanation. M. 

 Fourcroy, among others, attended upon this occasion ; and his solution, which 

 will apply to all cases of a similar kind, referred the whole to the extreme 

 difficulty with which external air had obtained any communication with the 

 inhumed bodies, in consequence of the close adaptation of coffin to coffin, 

 and the compactness with which every pit had been filled up. Difficult, 

 however, as this communication must have been, he conceived that, from the 

 natural elasticity of atmospheric air, some small portion of it had still entered, 

 conveying, perhaps, just oxygen enough to excite the new action of decom- 

 position. This having commenced, the constituent oxygen of the dead ani- 

 mal organs would itself be progressively disengaged, and rapaciously laid 

 hold of by all the other constituent principles, from their strong and general 

 affinity to it. During this gradual evolution, there can be little doubt that the 

 greater part of it would be seized by the predominant azote, a very considera- 

 ble part by the carbon, and the rest by the hydrogen ; and the result would 

 be, upon the total but very slow escape of the constituent and disengaged 

 oxygen, that the whole or nearly the whole of the azote a considerable por 



