PROCESS III.
Bones analyzed. Instanced in Ox-bones.
Cut into pieces the Bones of a leg of beef, carefully separating all the marrow. Put them into a retort, and distil them in a reverberating furnace, as usual. A phlegm will come over first; then a Volatile Spirit, which will become stronger and stronger; afterwards a Volatile Salt in a dry form, with some Oil; and, lastly, a black Oil, with a little more Volatile Salt. There will be left in the retort a charred matter, from which a little Sea salt may be extracted. Reduce this charred matter to ashes, by burning it in the open air. These ashes will give some slight tokens of a Fixed Alkali.
OBSERVATIONS.
The analysis of Bones proves that they consist of the same principles with flesh and blood; and the same may be said, in general, of all matters that are truly animal, or that actually constitute any part of an animal.
Nevertheless, we find in the ashes of Bones somewhat of an Alkaline quality; seeing they make a red precipitate in a solution of Corrosive Sublimate: and yet a true Fixed Alkali cannot be obtained from them. These ashes are probably in the same case with quick lime; which hath certain properties of Alkaline Salts, though no Salt of that kind can be extracted from it.
Mr. Geoffroy analyzed Bones in the same manner as he did flesh; that is, he at first made a strong decoction of them with water, and then examined and distilled apart the extract afforded him by that decoction, and the Bones deprived of that extract. On this analysis he made two remarkable observations.
The first is, that Bones yielded to boiling water their principles and their Volatile Salts, both sooner and more copiously than flesh did: for in the analysis which Mr. Geoffroy made of several sorts of flesh, though he robbed them in a manner of all their principles by boiling, yet their dried fibres afterwards yielded a considerable quantity of Volatile Salt; whereas the Bones, of which he had made an extract by boiling, afforded him but a very small quantity thereof when analyzed.
The second observation worthy of notice which Mr. Geoffroy made on his analysis of Bones is this; the Salt, which, as was shewn in the analysis of flesh, was resolved by the water wherein he boiled the flesh, and consequently arose when he distilled the extract obtained from that decoction, and crystallized in the form of parallelopipeds, took a quite different turn in the analysis of Bones. None of it appeared in distilling the extract made by decoction, but arose in distilling the boiled Bones, that were exhausted of almost all their other principles by the decoction with water. These differences probably arise from the different contexture of the animal matters in which they are observed.
This analysis of Bones may serve as a pattern for analyzing all the solid parts of animals, such as horns, hoofs, ivory, &c.