Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 / In Which the Elements of that Science Are Familiarly Explained and Illustrated by Experiments

by Mrs. Marcet

Their organisation is certainly more perfect and intricate, and the ingredients that occasionally enter into their composition are more numerous. But notwithstanding the wonderful variety observable in the texture of the animal organs, we find that the original compounds, from which all the varieties of animal matter are derived, may be reduced to the three heads just mentioned. Animal substances being the most complicated of all natural compounds, are most easily susceptible of decomposition, as the scale of attractions increases in proportion to the number of constituent principles. Their analysis is, however, both difficult and imperfect; for as they cannot be examined in their living state, and are liable to alteration immediately after death, it is probable that, when submitted to the investigation of a chemist, they are always more or less altered in their combinations and properties, from what they were, whilst they made part of the living animal.

EMILY.

The mere diminution of temperature, which they experience by the privation of animal heat, must, I should suppose, be sufficient to derange the order of attractions that existed during life.

MRS. B.

That is one of the causes, no doubt: but there are many other circumstances which prevent us from studying the nature of living animal substances. We must therefore, in a considerable degree, confine our researches to the phenomena of these compounds in their inanimate state.

These three kinds of animal matter, gelatine, albumen, and fibrine, form the basis of all the various parts of the animal system; either solid, as the skin, flesh, nerves, membranes, cartilages, and bones; or fluid, as blood, chyle, milk, mucus, the gastric and pancreatic juices, bile, perspiration, saliva, tears, &c.

CAROLINE.

Is it not surprising that so great a variety of substances, and so different in their nature, should yet all arise from so few materials, and from the same original elements?

MRS. B.

The difference in the nature of various bodies depends, as I have often observed to you, rather on their state of combination, than on the materials of which they are composed. Thus, in considering the chemical nature of the creation in a general point of view, we observe that it is throughout composed of a very small number of elements. But when we divide it into the three kingdoms, we find that, in the mineral, the combinations seem to result from the union of elements casually brought together; whilst in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, the attractions are peculiarly and regularly produced by appropriate organs, whose action depends on the vital principle. And we may further observe, that by means of certain spontaneous changes and decompositions, the elements of one kind of matter become subservient to the reproduction of another; so that the three kingdoms are intimately connected, and constantly contributing to the preservation of each other.