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SELECTED ARTICLES. 
ART. XXXV. — OBSERVATIONS UPON A FORCE HITHERTO 
UNKNOWN, AND UPON THE ACTION WHICH IT EX- 
ERCISES IN THE FORMATION OF CHEMICAL COMBI- 
NATIONS IN THE LIVING SYSTEM. By M. Berzelius. 
Previous to the year 1800, it was hardly douhted that 
there could exist in these phenomena any other determining 
cause than the degree of affinity, caloric, and, in some cases, 
light. At that time the influence of electricity was discovered, 
which led to the confounding the electrical with the chemical 
relations of bodies, and to consider affinity only as the mani- 
festation of a strong electrical contrast, increased by light and 
caloric. This system presents no other mode of explaining 
the origin of a new compound, than by supposing, that, by 
the approach of two bodies placed in presence of each other, 
their electrical states become neutralized in a more or less 
complete manner. 
Setting out upon these ideas, deduced from the effects 
which take place in inorganic nature, and studying the che- 
mical reactions which organized bodies present, we discover 
that, in these latter organs, substances the most diverse are 
eliminated; whilst the crude matter, from which they proceed, 
consists in general, of only one liquid, circulating with more 
or less quickness in the vessels. The vessels of the animal 
body, for example, propel the blood to their point of origin 
without interruption, and secrete nevertheless, at their extre- 
mities, milk, bile, urine, &c, without the admission of any 
other liquid capable of causing by its affinity any decompo- 
sition whatever. Here an evident change takes place, 
which the study of organic nature cannot as yet explain. 
About this time, Kirchoff discovered that amidon, dissolved 
in a weak acid, is changed at a certain temperature, first, into 
gum, and then into sugar of grapes. He sought, in confor- 
mity with the principles received with regard to effects of this 
kind, for that which the acid had separated from the amidon 
to reduce it to sugar; but no gas was disengaged, the acid, 
