592 
ADULTERATION OF CANTHARIDES 
CHRYSOMELA FATUOSA. 
EMMEL detected fifteen per cent, of chrysomela fatuosa in 
catharides obtained from a commercial house, and he has no 
doubt that it was intentional . — Central Blatt, 1851, No. vi, 
p. 96. 
THE PREDOMINANCE OF WATER IN THE COMPOSITION 
OF VEGETABLES AND ANIMALS. 
POTATOES contain 75 per cent, of water (by weight), and 
turnips no less than 90 per cent., which explains, by the way, 
the small inclination of turnip-fed cattle and sheep for drink. 
A beef steak, strongly pressed between blotting paper, yields 
nearly four-fifths of its weight of water. Of the human frame 
(bones included) only about one-fourth is solid matter (chiefly 
carbon and nitrogen); the rest is water. If a man weighing ten 
stone were squeezed flat under a hydraulic press, seven and a 
half stone of water would run out, and only two-and-a-half 
stone of dry residue would remain. A man is therefore, che- 
mically speaking, forty-five pounds of carbon and nitrogen 
diffused through five-and-a-half pailfuls of water. Berzelius, 
indeed, in recording the fact, justly remarks that “ the living 
organism is to be regarded as a mass diffused in water and 
Dalton, by a series of experiments tried on his own person, 
found that of the food with which we daily repair this water- 
built fabric, five-sixths are also water. Thus amply does 
science confirm the popular saying, that water is the “ first ne- 
cessary of life.” 
Quarterly Review . 
MECHANISM OF EMPHYSEMA. 
EMPHYSEMA of the lungs was said by Laennec, in one of 
the most original and accurate of his descriptions, to have two 
varieties: the one being a dilatation of the air-cells, and finally 
a rupture of them one into another by removal of their septa ; 
the other, a rupture of the air-passages directly into the inter- 
lobular areolar tissue. It is needless to repeat these descrip- 
tions, the distinction of vesicular and interlobular emphysema 
being well known to every one, or at least accessible to all, in 
words which cannot be improved. It is only necessary to add, 
