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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1852 Excerpt:...and other salts, and of sulphur and phosphorus, with a compound of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, in which the relative proportion of these elements is invariable; and this compound may be considered as the commencement and starting point of all other animal tissues, because these are all produced from the blood. These considerations induced Mulder to give to this product of the decomposition of albumen, &c., by potash, the name of profeme (from jrjamuM, " I take the first rank.") The blood, or the constituents of the blood, are consequently compounds of this proteine with variable proportions of inorganic substances. Mulder further ascertained, that the insoluble nitrogenized constituent of wheat flour (vegetable fibrine,) when treated with potash, yields the very same product, proteine; and it has recently been proved that vegetable albumen and caseine are acted on by potash precisely as animal albumen and caseine are. 4. As far, therefore, as our researches have gone, it may be laid down as a law, founded on experience, that vegetables produce, in their organism, compounds of proteine; and that put of these compounds of proteine the various tissues and parts of the animal body are developed by the vital force, with the aid of the oxygen of the atmosphere and of the elements of water. Now, although it cannot be demonstrated that proteine exists ready formed in these vegetable and animal products, and although the difference in their properties seems to indicate that their elements are not arranged in the same manner, yet the hypothesis of the pre-existence of proteine, as a point of departure in developing and comparing their properties, is exceedingly convenient. At all events it is certain that the elements of these compounds assu...