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Updated: June 16, 2025
When a schoolgirl, in her chemistry, studies the reciprocal action of acids and alkalies, what is there to hinder the teaching her its application to the various processes of cooking where acids and alkalies are employed? Why should she not be led to see how effervescence and fermentation can be made to perform their office in the preparation of light and digestible bread?
If by our various inductions we have been able to proceed no further than to such propositions as these, a a mark of b, or a and b marks of one another, c a mark of d, or c and d marks of one another, without anything to connect a or b with c or d; we have a science of detached and mutually independent generalizations, such as these, that acids redden vegetable blues, and that alkalies colour them green; from neither of which propositions could we, directly or indirectly, infer the other: and a science, so far as it is composed of such propositions, is purely experimental.
The product obtained consists of beautiful white membranes, insoluble in alkalies and diluted acids, which show under the microscope beautiful cells joined in a tissue following the embryo, with which it has indeed a striking analogy in its properties and composition. This membrane, exhausted by the alcohol and ether, gives, by an elementary analysis, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and azote.
If either the acid or the alkaline elements are present in excessive or insufficient quanitities, abnormal conditions and functions, that is, disease will be the result. All acids, with the exception of carbonic acid, exert a tensing influence upon the tissues of the body, while alkalies have a relaxing effect.
The indiscriminate and over-free employment of these alkalies, however, as nursery remedies is by all means to be avoided, for the symptoms of indigestion for which a grown person if suffering would seek the advice of a skilful doctor require his help no less when the patient is a child.
Not only were the threads of linen cloth of extraordinary fineness, but the dyes were equally remarkable, and were unaffected by strong alkalies.
Such underclays withstand intense heat and are used in making fire brick, because their alkalies have been removed by the long-continued growth of vegetation. Fuel coal is also too pure to have been accumulated by driftage. In that case we should expect to find it mixed with mud, while in fact it often contains no more ash than the vegetal matter would furnish from which it has been compressed.
Alkalies neutralize the acids, act as diuretics, and eliminate the materies morbi. Alone, and in small doses, they are unable to influence the course of the disease; but when given in very large doses their effects are marvelous; the pulse falls, the urine is increased in quantity and becomes alkaline, and the inflammation subsides.
Galvanism reacting on chemistry disclosed the metallic bases of the alkalies, and inaugurated the electro-chemical theory; in the hands of Oersted and Ampère it led to the laws of magnetic action; and by its aid Faraday has detected significant facts relative to the constitution of light.
Turner found the ignited Indian tabasheer to consist almost entirely of pure silica with a minute quantity of lime and vegetable matter. He failed to find any trace of alkalies in it. It gave the following result: Silica. = 96.94 Potash and lime. = 0.13 Water. = 2.93 Organic matter. = trace
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