206 
THOMAS WALLEY. 
I do not wish you lo imagine that the blood is every day and 
every hour the same; the opposite is the fact. Probably it is 
never the same for even consecutive minutes of time. Now its 
fluid elements are in excess, then its solids. One hour it contains 
more saline elements than are absolutely necessary to enable it to 
perform its function; another it is deficient in such elements. 
One minute its flesh-forming constituents predominate, the next 
its respiratory; but all the while a certain and necessary correla¬ 
tion is kept up. Cross the boundary line and health ceases to be 
maintained, nutrition becomes impaired, the vital elements of the 
cell elements of the body gain not their normal stimuli and sup¬ 
port, and disease takes the place of health. 
I have said that the blood is composed of fluids and solids. It 
will, perhaps, astonish a few when I say that the proportion of 
water in 1,000 parts of blood is between 800 and 900, but this 
water, large as the quantity appears to the uninitiated, is abso¬ 
lutely necessary to preserve its normal fluidity and to enable it to 
circulate freely through the great streams and little rivulets of the 
system. As well might the farmer attempt to irrigate his pas¬ 
tures with mud, as the heart and arteries to circulate the blood if 
its volume of water were materially diminished. 
Not only is this water necessary for the purpose of facilitating 
the distribution of the blood, it performs the office of preserving 
the solubility of the materials necessary for the support of the 
system—of preserving, in other words, these materials in the 
condition in which they may be absorbed and assimilated; and in 
order to render this solution perfect it contains certain chemical 
substances of an alkaline nature which possess the property in 
themselves of dissolving, or, more accurately speaking, of hold¬ 
ing in solution the albuminous and fibrinous substances ( colloids ) 
of which the flesh (muscle) is composed. Amongst the other 
chemical constituents of the blood we have soluble phosphatic 
salts, i. e., phosphate of lime and magnesia, both absolutely neces¬ 
sary for the building up and nourishing of the bony frame and 
the nerve and brain tissues. Carbonaceous material, fats ( hydro - 
carbons ), and starch, sugar, etc., are also important elements of 
the blood serum, as by them the fatty tissues are supported, and 
