RESPIRATION AND NUTRITION. 
583 
blood, in order to afford it the requisite fluidity to circulate with 
freedom and rapidity through the different organsof the economy. 
6. That the carbonic acid likewise enters the arterial blood, 
which, according to M. Magnus, contains more than the venous 
blood of it ; its apparent use being, either for the purpose of 
forming the carbonates so serviceable to the organs, of holding 
salts with excess of acid, a state in which they are soluble and 
assimilable : hence the reason why the carbonate and phosphate 
of lime being particularly destined for the nutriment of bones, 
these salts being, as is very well known, completely insoluble 
in the neutral state, and therefore incapable of assimilation. 
7. That what favours this view of the matter is, that carbonic 
acid is the only free acid contained in the blood. 
8. The small excess of fibrine contained in the blood proceeds 
from its albumen turned into fibrine through pulmonary com- 
bustion. 
9. That the colouring globules become loaded with oxygen 
for the purpose of interstitial or intra-organic combustion. 
10. That this combustion serves the purpose, 1st, of setting 
the fibrine of the blood free, in order that it may become assi- 
milable ; and, 2dly, of assisting in promoting the decomposition of 
organs by burning such organic elements as have become useless, 
and on that account eliminatory. 
11. That in this combustion, as in the former one, there is 
again production of water and carbonic acid gas. 
12. That this water and carbonic acid gas enters the venous 
blood ; the water for the purpose of replacing, in part, what the 
organs of secretion and exhalation have robbed the arterial blood 
of ; the carbonic acid to combine with the calcareous salts re- 
maining unassimilated ; while, that which does not escape from 
the lungs, every time there is a fresh inspiration, produces a fresh 
quantity of the acid compound. The same likewise happens 
with the water. 
13. That the azotic and oxygenous elements of organs which, 
in the state of solid, are incapable of being thus eliminated after 
being worn out, and that the oxygen which has' not become, nor 
is able to become, combusted, undergo decomposition during in- 
terstitial combustion, and, entering into fresh combinations, be- 
come soluble, and pass into the blood ; whence they are ultimately 
eliminated through the urinary passages under the form of urea, 
uric and hippuric acid, according to their nature, &c., all the 
products being eminently azotic and oxygenous. 
14. Lastly, another purpose seeming to be served by the 
colouring globules, is, through their demi-solid state, to maintain 
in suspension and motion within the blood, the fibrine in a state 
of solution in the albumen, and to keep it from coagulating. 
Recueil de Med. Vet., May 1851. 
