[ 8 3 ° ] 
For lad year, in the month of May, I put fome 
gudgeons, and an eel, into our common lime-water, 
and in feven days boiled one of the gudgeons, but 
found it too putrid to eat. 
After twenty-eight days I boiled another, and it 
diflolved almoft into infenfible parts j which fhews, 
that it was much putrefied. 
Dr. Alfton likewife informed me, that he put a 
piece of veal in pounded or flack’d ftone-lime, which 
in a week became tough and dry. I put a piece of 
veal, from half to three- quarters of an inch thick, 
into chalk-lime, on May the 10th, and on the 3 ift 
of the fame month it had a putrid fmell, and was 
in the middle red and raw, with a thin hard out- 
fide. 
Having communicated thefe experiments to Dr. 
Pringle (whofe trials having been made with chalk 
lime-water, which is in common ufe here, agreed 
with the laft of mine), he obferved, that the differ- 
ence between ftone-lime-water and chalk-lime-wa- 
ter might probably confifl: in this : The chalk, be- 
fore calcination, being a highly feptic fubflance *, 
if fome of its particles were not fully calcined, thefe, 
by mixing with the water, would impart to it fome 
degree of a putrefying quality, contrary to that vir- 
tue the water receives from fuch parts, as are fuffici- 
ently burnt. That the fame would be the cafe of 
fhells, alfo feptics ; and therefore that the lime-wa- 
ter, made either of chalk or fhells, would prove 
more or lefs antifeptic, or even continue feptic, accord- 
* Obferv. on the difeafes of the army, ift Ed. p. 390. 
ing 
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