A treatise on the chemical, medicinal, and physiological properties of creosote : illustrated by experiments on the lower animals: with some considerations on the embalment of the Egyptians. Being the Harveian prize dissertation for 1836 / by John Rose Cormack.

Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the chemical, medicinal, and physiological properties of creosote : illustrated by experiments on the lower animals: with some considerations on the embalment of the Egyptians. Being the Harveian prize dissertation for 1836 / by John Rose Cormack. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    VI cessary from their being all generated along with creosote, and because their separation from it re- quires a variety of chemical manipulations, the ra- tionale of which can only be properly understood by those acquainted with the relations which these substances bear to each other and to creosote. Under the chemical properties of creosote natur- ally fell the consideration of its antiseptic virtues, and this suggested some remarks upon the embalm- ing of the Egyptians, and the preservative power of peat-moss, from a belief that the Egyptian mummies and the fresh bodies found in peat water owed their preservation to creosote. To have entered fully into the consideration of these interesting topics would have been out of place, the subject having been an- nounced for competition by a strictly medical society, by whom it was supposed any lengthened disquisition on these subjects would have been con- sidered no additional recommendation of the paper which contained it. The other subjects discussed in this Essay are intimately connected with medicine, although ap- parently but a disproportionately small part is de- voted to this subject. It is conceived, however, that considerable light may be thrown upon the the- rapeutic properties of creosote, by attending to the effects produced by it when administered to the lower animals, and by comparing the ancient medicinal uses