General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 1 (of 3)Bichat, Xavier
Science
General Anatomy, Applied to Physiology and Medicine, Vol. 1 (of 3)
Bichat, Xavier
Human anatomy; Human physiology
The cellular texture that is boiled exhibits phenomena analogous to
other organs treated in the same way. 1st. At the instant of boiling,
when an albuminous froth rises upon the water that contains it, it
remains soft, and about the same it was at first. 2d. When this
froth is formed, it becomes hard, is crisped and contracted in size.
The hardening increases until it boils, which takes place almost
immediately. In this state the texture is firmer; it has become
elastic; if drawn in an opposite direction, it suddenly returns, which
it would not do before. 3d. Ebullition being continued, it gradually
softens and loses the hardness it had acquired; then it can hardly
be extended at all; it may be much elongated without breaking, in a
natural state, the rupture of it is now the effect of the least effort.
4th. In fine, by the continued action of boiling water, it gradually
melts. I have remarked, that it does not in any period of ebullition,
assume the yellowish tinge, which is spread over the whole of the
fibrous system when boiled.
From the phenomena that cellular texture offers when exposed to the
action of dry and moist air, of cold and boiling water, &c. I presume
that it is less easily changed by the gastric juices than many others,
the muscular texture, for example; besides, the following facts prove
this. 1st. The taste, almost always a certain index which nature has
given us to judge of digestible aliments, is much less gratified with
the cellular texture that is mixed with cooked meat, than with the
meat itself. 2d. I have made this experiment upon myself; when my
stomach contained a sufficient quantity of food, I excited vomiting
nearly an hour after eating; when it contained but little, I could not
vomit without taking a large quantity of warm water; I then threw up
this and with it the aliments the stomach contained. I have frequently
ascertained by these means, especially by the last, that the cellular
lumps which are found with the fleshy fibres of boiled meat, are much
longer in being altered than the fibres themselves; these last have
become pulpy before the others are acted upon. The fat, which generally
fills these cellular lumps, may have an influence also in this
phenomenon. 3d. I have made the same observation upon dogs that I have
opened at different periods of digestion to determine the difference of
the bile in the cystic and hepatic ducts, a difference of which I have
already given some account.
How can the cellular texture unite to the softness and delicacy that
characterize it, a greater resistance to the different re-agents, than
that of other textures much more firm?
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