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Updated: May 23, 2025
The chemical analysis of these three substances has led to the very interesting result that they contain the same organic elements, united in the same proportion by weight; and, what is still more remarkable, that they are identical in composition with the chief constituents of blood, animal fibrine, and albumen.
Many as these constituents are, they are all resolved into the simple elements, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, while a little sulphur, a little phosphorus, lime, chlorine, sodium, &c., are added. FLESH and BLOOD are composed of water, fat, fibrine, albumen, gelatine, and the compounds of lime, phosphorus, soda, potash, magnesia, iron, &c.
Common salt is largely made up of soda, but is found with potash in many vegetables. This last element is also in meat, fish, milk, vegetables, and fruits. Iron abounds in flesh and vegetables; and sulphur enters into albumen, caseine, and fibrine.
Still, the great demands of the mind upon the nervous tissues remain. And it is these losses which may be peculiarly supplied by the nervous stimulants. Such are coffee and tea. Common nutrition by common food, and particularly the adipose and phosphatic varieties, nourishes nerve tissue, no doubt, as gluten and fibrine do muscle.
It may fix the water with the fibrine, and thus destroy the power of coagulation; or it may extract the water so determinately as to produce coagulation." The doctor then goes on to describe the minute circulation through which the constructive material in the blood is distributed to every part of the body.
It goes to form the fibres of those muscles which are contained in a half formed state in the blood. You are laughing by this time I know, and I also know the reason why. I have told you the same story twice over. You have not forgotten my wearisome description of gluten, and here I am, saying exactly the same thing of fibrine! You conclude I am dreaming, and have made a mistake!
The superphosphate from the Copiolites is good; but the superphosphate from fresh bones is better still, and therefore dearer, because it has in it the fibrine of the bones, which is full of nitrogen, like gristle or meat; and all that has been washed out of the bone-earth bed ages and ages ago. But you must learn some chemistry to understand that.
If we now compare the composition of all organised parts with that of fibrine and albumen, the following relations present themselves: All parts of the animal body which have a decided shape, which form parts of organs, contain nitrogen.
Now, the analysis of caseine has led to the result, which, after the details I have given, can hardly excite your surprise, that this substance also is identical in composition with the chief constituents of blood, fibrine and albumen.
The requisite solvent, a kind of ferment called pepsin, which acts only in the presence of the acid, is poured forth by the glands of the stomach only after they have absorbed certain soluble nutritive substances of the food; then this pepsin promptly dissolves muscle, fibrine, coagulated albumen, cartilage, and the like.
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