United States or Turkmenistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But the ammonia, together with the carbonic acid, are alone insufficient to become part of a plant destined to the nourishment of animals. In the absence of the alkalies, the phosphates and other earthy salts, no vegetable fibrine, no vegetable caseine, can be formed.
Fibrine, still more intricate in constitution, contains in each atom, 298 atoms of carbon, 40 of nitrogen, 2 of sulphur, 228 of hydrogen, and 92 of oxygen in all, 660 atoms; or, more strictly speaking equivalents. And these two substances are so unstable as to decompose at quite ordinary temperatures; as that to which the outside of a joint of roast meat is exposed.
Fibrine and albumen, the chief ingredients of blood, contain, in all, seven chemical elements, among which nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulphur are found. They contain also the earth of bones. The serum retains in solution sea salt and other salts of potash and soda, in which the acids are carbonic, phosphoric, and sulphuric acids.
Our blood, then, contains white of egg; it contains in fact if you care to know it sixty-five times more white of egg than fibrine, for in 1,000 ounces of blood, you will find 195 of albumen, and only three of fibrine; of casein, none. Nevertheless we eat cheese from time to time. And we generally eat more meat than eggs, and meat is principally composed of fibrine!
Grain and other nutritious vegetables yield us, not only in starch, sugar, and gum, the carbon which protects our organs from the action of oxygen, and produces in the organism the heat which is essential to life, but also in the form of vegetable fibrine, albumen, and caseine, our blood, from which the other parts of our body are developed.
It may be obtained from wheat flour by a mechanical operation, and in a state of tolerable purity; it is then called gluten, but the glutinous property belongs, not to vegetable fibrine, but to a foreign substance, present in small quantity, which is not found in the other cerealia.
Finally, if you examine his blood, you will meet with the same serum and clot, the whole company of hydroclorates, phosphates, carbonates, &c., from which we shrank before, and globules made like your own; having the same construction, and the same life, or action, if you like it better. I need scarcely add that 100 oz. of its fibrine and albumen contain: Of carbon......... 63 oz.
There was a very simple way of ascertaining this by making out an inventory of the contents of the lymph liquid, and when this was done, they were found to consist of water, albumen, and the salts of serum; there was even a little fibrine; the only thing wanting was globules.
He says: "Every kind of substance employed by man as food consists of sugar, starch, oil and glutinous matters, mingled together in various proportions; these are designed for the support of the animal frame. 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.
The globules of the blood contain fibrine and albumen, along with a red colouring matter, in which iron is a constant element. Besides these, the blood contains certain fatty bodies in small quantity, which differ from ordinary fats in several of their properties.
Word Of The Day