Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 1.djvu/303

Rh earths are compounds of a similar nature; and in some experiments upon both barytes and strontian, inﬂammable matter was produced at the negative surface, and burned With a red ﬂame. This matter Mr. Dav-y has much reason to believe was the basis of the earth employed. Moreover. although these earths have the strongest relation to the alkalies, there is also a further chain of resemblances through lime. magnesia, glucine, alumine, and silex; each of which, there is some reason to imagine, may yield new elements when subjected to analysis by electric attraction and repulsion. Nor, indeed, are our hopes or expectations conﬁned to the decomposition of earthy substances; as there is equal reason to suppose that the three acids which have hitherto resisted decomposition, by the usual means of chemical analysis, may nevertheless yield the oxygen which they have been presumed to contain when subjected to the more intense action of electro-chemical afﬁnity.

Mr. Home, in the course of his late investigation of the functions of the stomach, having observed that the pyloric and cardiac portions of that cavity were separated in many animals by a permanent division, and in most by at least a temporary muscular contraction, during the process of digestion; and having also found that the food in the pyloric portion has in general nearly the same consistence, was led to consider by what means the quantity of ﬂuid frequently taken at meals could be absorbed from the cardiac portion; and be imagined the spleen, from its contiguity to the stomach, to be the most natural channel for that purpose.

To ascertain whether liquids do really pass from the stomach by any other channel than the pylorus, that passage was secured by a ligature in a living dog. and ﬁve ounces of ﬂuid coloured with indigo were injected into the stomach. At the end of half an hour, two ounces were brought up by vomiting ; and the dog being killed, one ounce was found remaining in the stomach; so that two ounces had escaped. The spleen was turgid: and upon making a transverse section of it, the cut surface presented an appearance of molecules or vesicles of a White colour, surrounded by the small ramiﬁcations of the arteries and plexuses of small veins.

In Mr. Home’s next experiment, he endeavoured to detect the course of the ﬂuid from the stomach of a dog, by employing a demotion of madder; but though the urine appeared to be somewhat tinged with the madder, no such colour could be discerned in the spleen.

I)At the suggestion of Mr. William Brande, he next substituted tincture of rhubarb, the presence of which might be made very evident by the addition of an alkali, which Occasions it to assume a brownish red colour.

After having learned. by various trials, by what time and within what pcriod the effect of rhubarb might be pcrccivcd in the urine of