Ourselves, our food, and our physic / [Benjamin Ridge].

  • Ridge, Benjamin
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ourselves, our food, and our physic / [Benjamin Ridge]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    50/332 (page 30)
    The Serum, of the serous membranes, has properties resembling the mucus of the mucous membranes, its natural quantity in the body being enormous. The Bile.—This is an alkaline secretion composed of albumen, resin, colouring matter, picromel, or a bitter-sweet substance, cholesterine, or a species of spermaceti or fatty matter, soda, phosphate of soda and lime, sulphate and muriate of soda, oxide of iron, and common salt. It is made from heterogeneous elements collected from all the abdominal organs, which flow into certain veins as common receivers; mixing with their other elements, which are principally the exhausted fluids of the arterial blood, carrying no oxygen or vital principle whatever. The united mass goes into the liver, which forms from it a concentrated element called The Bile. Thus the liver is a great purifyer of much dross and many natural alkalies, fabricated in the body itself, though physiology teaches that bile is made from the blood, whereas many of its elements are not found in the blood at all. All animal, earthy, and chemical properties which constitute the elements of the body act on each other in every form of combination, having a constant tendency to reproduction. Solids, fluids, and gases are renewed, and those elements which are unfit to be retained, and known as excrementitious, are thrown out of the body as no longer required. These consist of, first— The Urine.—This contains urea, which is a compound of carbonate of ammonia and uric acid, which form urate of ammonia, and free lactic acid, lactate of ammonia, and animal matters, mucus of the bladder, sulphate of potass and soda, phosphate and muriate of soda and ammonia, earthly matter, lime, &c., besides other substances. All its salts are derived from the blood through the kidneys, but ail the water which holds them in solution comes from another source. Perspiration.—This contains muriate of soda and free acetic acid. All know the vast quantity exuded in violent exercise ; but even when no exercise is taken, there is always an insensible action or radiation taking place over the whole body in alight fluid or gaseous form, being a simple exudation from the inorganic fluid circulation. The same phenomenon takes place into and through the mucous and serous mem-