Phosphates : their chemical composition and uses in the different tissues of the body / by M.F. Anderson.

  • Anderson, M. F. (Mark French)
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Phosphates : their chemical composition and uses in the different tissues of the body / by M.F. Anderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    PHOSPHATES, Their Chemical Composition and Uses in the Different Tissues of the Body^ Fob, some time past, phosphorus, in some way or other, has. been known to play an important part in animal and vegetable life. Its general existence in plants in the form of phosphates,, and in nervous matter in that or some other form, has been long known, as well as the fact that as tricalcic phosphate it enters, largely into the composition of bone ; but the exact part that phosphorus plays in the animal economy, and the condition in which it exists in the different tissues of animals, has not, to my knowledge, been made a subject of special investigation. It shall be my endeavour briefly to point out what I believe to be the combinations of phosphorus in the animal system, and to^ indicate the use of these combinations.. The properties of phosphorus are too well-known to need more than a passing notice ; it is a colourless waxy-looking solid, which does not naturally exist in an elementary state, owing to its great affinity for oxygen. Even at ordinary tem- peratures the combination of phosphorus and oxygen to form phosphoric acid quickly takes place. The oxides of phosphorus are four:— Sub-oxide P2O. Oxide (Hypophosphorous Acid) .. .. PO. Phosphorous Acid .. PO3. Phosphoric Acid PO5. The most important of these different oxides of phos[)horusk is phosphoric acid, as it is in this form phosphorus is generally met with in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms; and it is only as a phosphate that I have met with phosphorus in the- tissues. The different kinds of food, both animal and vegetable, that are the carriers of phosphorus-compounds to the human system, all contain their phosphorus as phosphates, and as-