THE ACTION OF DIURETICS. 
351 
of the primary elements of the blood, increases in proportion, and 
then ought to arrive a time when they have lost their organisable 
properties ; and this, in fact, is what observation shews to be 
the case. 
M. Denis, of Commercy, and from him the majority of chemists, 
have come to the conclusion, that all these alkaline salts possess 
the property of attracting, dissolving, and even greatly altering, the 
fibrin, according to which property they have been ranged in the 
following order, — chloruret of barium, nitrate of potass, sulphate 
of potass, sulphate of soda, chloruret of potassium, sodium, and 
calcium. The nitrate of soda, sulphate of ammonia, phosphate of 
soda, nitrate of strontium, and the ammoniacal salt never acting 
but in a partial manner, probably in altering the fibrin. 
So that the effect of the continued administration of alkaline 
salts is, first, to augment the fluidity of the blood, to diminish its 
plasticity, its coagulability, and to render its fibrin soft, its clot 
small and diffluent. Next after this, the blood takes on a veritable 
cachectic condition, generating a tendency to the eruption of putrid 
disease, as in constitutional scurvy. The urine flows clear and 
abundant; emaciation supervenes; then ?narasmus. The blood 
filters through the parietes of its containing vessels ; serous accu- 
mulations follow; death ensues. 
It is therefore a very great error, one indeed too often occurring 
in veterinary practice, to insist too much on the employment of 
alkalines. The facility with which they are obtained pure, and 
administered to sick animals, too frequently induces practitioners 
to persist in their use, even in cases wherein they are plainly 
interdicted, as in asthenic dropsies, cachexia, &c. If we desire to 
administer such for some days to bring on diuresis and alter the 
state of the blood, we ought not to delay to substitute other medi- 
cines for them, the moment the end we have had in view is accom- 
plished. At such a time we should have recourse to sedative 
diuretics, and particularly to the balsams, which act potently on 
the urinary apparatus without affecting the constitution of the 
blood. 
Journal de Medecine Viter inair e de Lyon. 
On the Influence of the Cutaneous Secretions on the 
Integrity of the General Functions of the Organism. 
By M. H. Bouley, 
Professor of Clinique at the Veterinary College, Alfort. 
In all animals, from the exterior tegumentary surface incessantly 
exhales vaporous or gaseous matters, the products of chemical 
operations going on in the interior of the organism of which the 
