48 Dr. Prout on the nature of the acid and saline matters 
seemed to preclude the possibility of the presence of any 
destructible acid ; and the only known fixed acids likely to 
be present were the sulphuric and phosphoric ; the muriate 
of barytes, however, neither alone, nor with the addition of 
ammonia, produced any immediate precipitate,* showing the 
absence of these two acids in any sensible quantity, and still 
farther confirming the results as before obtained. 
In this manner the three following results, selected from a 
variety of others of a similar nature, were obtained. 
No.i 
No . 2 
No .3 
Muriatic acid in union with a fixed alkalif 
grs. 
■12 
grs. 
■95 
grs. 
1.71 
* with ammonia 
1 '56 
■76 
•40 
— - — in a free or unsaturated state 
i‘59 
2‘22 
2'72 
Total 
S' 27 
3V3 
4-83 
These results then seem to demonstrate, that free, or at 
least unsaturated muriatic acid in no small quantity exists in 
the stomach of these animals during the digestive process ; 
and I have ascertained, in a general manner, that the same 
is the case in the stomach of the hare, the horse, the calf, and 
the dog. I have also uniformly found free muriatic acid in 
great abundance in the acid fluid ejected from the human 
* It may be proper to remark, that ammonia, after some time, caused a floccu- 
lent precipitate, consisting of the earthy phosphates in union with vegetable and 
animal matter, and that after combustion, traces of sulphuric acid, the result of 
that process, were very perceptible. But it is evident, from the experiment related 
in the text, that neither of these acids previously existed in the original fluid in a 
free state. 
i For the sake of analogy, the chlorine, in union with the basis of they, ret? alkali, 
is reduced in this table and the following to the state of muriatic acid. 
