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There is added, therefore, by means of these compounds, to the nitrogenised constituents of food, a certain amount of carbon; or, as in the case of butter, of carbon and hydrogen; that is, an excess of elements, which cannot possibly be employed in the production of blood, because the nitrogenised substances contained in the food already contain exactly the amount of carbon which is required for the production of fibrine and albumen.
In this view, I do not see anything so fit to talk about, or half so interesting, as that which relates to the innumerable majority of our fellow-creatures, the dead-living, who are hundreds of thousands to one of the live-living, and with whom we all potentially belong, though we have got tangled for the present in some parcels of fibrine, albumen, and phosphates, that keep us on the minority side of the house.
I should be a good deal puzzled to make you understand this, if we had not our grand list to refer to. Ounces. Carbon 63 Hydrogen 7, etc. Fibrine, casein, albumen, they are all the same thing in the main. It is one substance assuming different appearances, according to the occasion; like actors who play several parts in a piece, and go behind the scenes from time to time to change their dresses.
Fibrine and albumen, besides having the same composition, agree also in this, that both dissolve in concentrated muriatic acid, yielding a solution of an intense purple colour. This solution, whether made with fibrine or albumen, has the very same re-actions with all substances yet tried.
The active principle of the juice known as papain, said to be capable of digesting two hundred times its weight of fibrine, is used for many disorders and ailments, from dyspepsia to ringworm and ichthyosis or fish-skin disease. By common repute the papaw tree has the power of rendering tough meat tender.
Carbon 63 Hydrogen 7 Oxygen 13 Nitrogen 17 100 Exactly like gluten and fibrine! Now, then, you can understand that no particular credit is due to the blood for manufacturing muscles out of the cheese of the milk which a little baby sucks.
The glutinous principles of food fibrine, albumen and casein are employed to build up the structure; while the oil, starch and sugar are chiefly used to generate heat in the body." Now, it is clear, that if alcohol is a food, it will be found to contain one or more of these substances.
But no, I am wide awake, I assure you, and mean what I say. And if these details are the same in the two cases, it is for the simple reason that the two bodies are one and the same thing; gluten and fibrine being in reality but one substance, so that were the most skilful professor to see the two together dried, he would be puzzled to say which came from the flour, and which from the blood.
The young animal, therefore, receives in the form of caseine, which is distinguished from fibrine and albumen by its great solubility, and by not coagulating when heated, the chief constituent of the mother's blood.
When we consider the transformation of the albumen of the blood into a part of an organ composed of fibrine, the identity in composition of the two substances renders the change easily conceivable. Indeed we find the change of a dissolved substance into an insoluble organ of vitality, chemically speaking, natural and easily explained, on account of this very identity of composition.
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