ROYAL MEDICAL AND CHIRURGICAL SOCIETY

1845 The Lancet  
619 entire loss of sensibility. In Section 201, Dr. Copland contends, that irritability "proceeds from and depends on the organic or ganglial nervous system ;" "that it does not arise from the spinal cord and nerves ;" and then he immediately allows, that "it is rendered more energetic and perfect in the voluntary muscles by the supply of nerves which they receive from the chord." In another part of the same I passage he says, " it cannot be doubted that strychnia or nux vomica affect these
more » ... alyzed) muscles more readily and I more remarkably than the sound ones. These facts may be I explained partly by referring to the minute structure of the cord, and partly by this substance being rapidly absorbed ' , and acting energetically on the structure of the cord and origins of the spinal nerves." To this it may be said, how can the minute structure of the cord," or the action of ' , strychnia " on the structure of the cord," account for these phenomena after the " structure of the cord" has been affected by disease so as to destroy its function ? P ! We trust in these remarks we have done Dr. Copland no injustice ; we might multiply instances of the kind; but it is extremely difficult to deal with qualifymg writers, who follow a half-affirmation by a half-denial, which makes either a whole affirmation or a whole negation just as they may afterwards desire. We decidedly and strongly protest against being considered ' , as " favourers of a particular hypothesis." Our sole aim has been to uphold the truth. , even illustrious Liebig ; for here is an officer of excise puts forth a pamphlet of fifty-eight pages, in which the deepest mysteries of organic chemistry and vegetable physiology are unveiled with necromantic dogmatism. His first three chapters are devoted to chemical analysis, which he treats with the airs of a master. Thus, in sound ' , potato he finds fourteen different constituents, one of them quite novel, with the romantic name of potateine; and of twelve of these he states the amount even to the third decimal place, in the most conndent tone. He finds sugar in sound potato, to the extent of 1 in 150 parts, which no chemist ever I found before in the unchanged potato; and he does not find I , asparagine, (crystallizable,) or the resinous body, which dif-I fuses an agreeable odour when heated, or the extractive matter, which blackens in the air, or citric acid, or the citrates of potash and lime, and phosphates of the same bases, all substances de-' , tected long ago by Vauquelin in potatoes. Tartaric and malic acids are also unnoticed by him, though found by Einhof and Henry. Since the solid matter of potatoes is chiefly ' , , starch, it may be asked, why they do not form a paste with boiling water. Einhof has answered it by showing that the particles of starch are coated with concrete, fibrine, and albumine, but that when this coat is dissolved by a weak alkaline ley, the potatoes boil into a mucilaginous pap. Of his skill in chemical analysis an estimate may be readily formed from the method he takes to beget his new bantlingpotateine. He digests three ounces of grated fresh potato in half a pint of alcohol, of from 0.825 to 0.828, filters, and drives off the alcohol by the heat of a water-bath, and l0 behold, potateine remains. Now, half a pint of such alcohol, diluted with the two and a quarter ounces of water, in three ounces of potatoes, will have a specific gravity of 0.88, or only twenty-seven per cent. overproof, and therefore much too weak to extract, as alcohol, any peculiar principle. In fact, he states nothing whatever to establish its separate identity, but contents himself with this most lame and impotent conclusion :-" I suspect it will be found to contain a large proportion of azote, as a constituent." It is quite clear from this that potateine is the coinage of a very presumpt-aous brain. His second chapter treats of the analysis of the diseased. potato; and here it deserves to be particularly remarked, that of sugar he could find NONE, literally, none; and yet this is the identical Mr. Phillips, whose occasional employment, for several years, it has been to visit manufacturers and dealers in tobacco throughout England, to examine their property, and profess to analyze it, the condemnation, and mulcting of whom in heavy penalties, on the ground of its containing sugar, even to the amount of one and a small fraction per cent., has often followed. Yet he does not discover it in the diseased potatoes, which contain at least five per cent. of it, and that not undisguised by any of the rank principles of the tobacco, but obvious, as it were, and most easily verified. He it was who caused five per cent. of sugar of milk, with one of terra japonica, nitre, and alum, in tobacco, to ferment into alcohol, equivalent to one per cent. of sugar; though no chemist on earth could, from such a mixture, obtain any alcohol whatever by fermentation.* * In the third chapter we are presented with an amusing harlequinade of chemistry, well calculated to excite the wonder of the Commissioners of Excise, where he makes all the different re-agents, alkalis, acids, salts, gases, &c., dance among the potato atoms in mazes of hermetic confusion. Such a driftless farrago of pseudo-experiments was never before palmed upon the credulity of John Bull. It is chemistry run mad. We have no desire to perplex our readers, or fatigue ourselves, with following Mr. Phillips through his remaining five chapters, in which he is most grandiloquent in the dark domains of phytology and microscopic cryptogamy. With these fictions Professor Lindley may deal, if he has a mind to meddle with such a potato savant. (Communicated by SAMUEL MERIMAN, M.D., &c.) THE subject of this case was a healthy young woman, aged twenty-six. She had been married twelve months, and it was computed had completed the seventh month of pregnancy. From the first she had much abdominal tenderness, and during the last two months there had been a dark-coloured watery discharge per vaginam. On the 26th of April, without evident exciting cause, she was prematurely taken in labour; there was more sanguineous discharge than usual before delivery, and much tenderness over the uterus. Examination per vaginam detected a p3rtion of placenta lying within a dilated os uteri, and by its side some semi-solid moveable substances, covered with thin membrane, which, on being removed, proved to be two small fœtuses. Presently the head of a third child presented, and was shortly born, but only lived three hours. The after-birth was in the vagina, and on being removed, was found to consist of two placentm, a single and a double one, with three membranous sacs. The patient had a good recovery. The two smaller fcetuses, in coiour, and the absence of all fcetor, resembled those which have been preserved in spirit, and were very much flattened from back to front. One little exceeded in size a crown-piece, the other was somewhat larger. Their weights respectively were four ounces and seven ounces; the double placenta weighed eight and a half ounces ; the child born alive, three pounds and eight ounces, and measured in length fifteen inches: they were all males. The placenta retained very little of its soft, spongy texture; it was firm, lobulated, and mixed up with much fatty matter.
doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(02)75091-5 fatcat:bo3xfm4cjzbzpezj5vhebff2w4