102 
THE MORBID STATES DENOMINATED PNEUMATOSES. 
By M. Rainard. 
[This Memoir will comprise four parts : — The first will treat 
of the physiologico-pathological generalities of gaseous fluids in 
the animal body during life ; the second will have reference to 
pneumatoses, and, first of all, to pulmonary pneumatosis or em- 
physema of the lung ; the third will inquire into pneumatosis of 
the alimentary canal, or typanitis ; and, lastly, the fourth will 
investigate cellular pneumatosis, or external emphysema.] 
ON THE GASEOS FLUIDS OF A LIVING ANIMAL BODY, 
CONSIDERED IN THE LIGHT OF GENERAL 
PHYSIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY. 
M. Dumas, by a learned deduction from scientific facts, esta- 
blishes on proofs furnished by the chemistry of organic bodies, 
that the primitive materials of organization are derived from the 
atmosphere. According to him, plants, like animals, spring 
from air, are real dependants of the atmosphere. 
The vegetable kingdom, adds this learned chemist, is the 
grand elaboratory of organic life. Therein is it that vegetable 
and animal matters are produced at the expense of the air, and 
by a transmutation no less true than surprising, these matters, 
ready formed, pass from vegetables to herbivorous animals, and 
then to carnivora, which either consume or preserve them ac- 
cording to their wants. Lastly, either during the life of such 
animals, or after their death, these organic matters, in the ratio in 
which they become consumed, return to the atmosphere whence 
they are derived ; and thus is formed the organic circle of organic 
life upon the surface of our globe. 
The air contains or generates certain oxyde productions, 
carbonic acid, water, azotic acid, oxyde of ammonia. Plants, 
the veritable decomposers of these, absorb their bases, carbon, 
hydrogen, azote and ammonia, with which elements they com- 
pound the whole of the matters organic and organisable, yielded 
to animals. These veritable apparatus for combustion, in their 
turn, reproduce carbonic acid, water, oxyde of ammonia and 
azotic acid, which once more depart into the air in order to re- 
generate afresh, through endless ages, the same phenomena. 
To this picture, striking no less by its simplicity than its 
grandeur, we must add the undeniable influence of solar light, 
which alone can set in action this immense apparatus of the 
