The History of Chemistry, Volume 1 (of 2)Thomson, Thomas
History
The History of Chemistry, Volume 1 (of 2)
Thomson, Thomas
Chemistry -- History
From the year 1740, when he became an academician, till his death
in 1781, he made a regular set of meteorological observations at
Pithiviers, with details relative to the direction of the needle, to
agriculture, to the medical constitution of the year, and to the time
of nest-building, and of the passage of birds.
Above sixty memoirs of his were published in the Transactions of the
French Academy of Sciences. They are so multifarious in their nature,
and embrace such a variety of subjects, that I shall not attempt even
to give their titles, but satisfy myself with stating such only as bear
more immediately upon the science of chemistry.
It will be proper in conducting this review to notice the result of
his labours connected with the ossification of bones; because, though
not strictly chemical, they throw light upon some branches of the
animal economy, more closely connected with chemistry than with any
other of the sciences. He examined, in the first place, whether the
ossification of bones, and their formation and reparation, did not
follow the same law that he had assigned to the increments of trees,
and he established, by a set of experiments, that bones increase by
the ossification of layers of the periosteum, as trees do by the
hardening of their cortical layers. Bones in a soft state increase in
every direction, like the young branches of plants; but after their
induration they increase only like trees, by successive additions of
successive layers. This organization was incompatible with the opinion
of those who thought that bones increased by the addition of an earthy
matter deposited in the meshes of the organized network which forms
the texture of bones. M. Duhamel combated this opinion by an ingenious
experiment. He had been informed by Sir Hans Sloane that the bones
of young animals fed upon madder were tinged red. He conceived the
plan of feeding them alternately with food mingled with madder, and
with ordinary food. The bones of animals thus treated were found to
present alternate concentric layers of red and white, corresponding
to the different periods in which the animal had been fed with
food containing or not containing madder. When these bones are sawn
longitudinally we see the thickness of the coloured layers, greater or
less, according to the number of plates of the periosteum that have
ossified. As for the portions still soft, or susceptible of extending
themselves in every direction, such as the plates in the neighbourhood
of the marrow, the reservoir of which increases during a part of the
time that the animal continues to grow, the red colour marks equally
the progress of their ossification by coloured points more or less
extended.
This opinion was attacked by Haller, and defended by M. Fougeroux,
nephew of M. Duhamel; but it is not our business here to inquire how
far correct.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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