Monotreme

“ A little attention to the visible changes which occur in the expanding material of different monera, when being checked in its onward course, soon demonstrates that it is the resistance of the medium, the counteraction of the energies composing the immediate environment, which causes chemical rupture in the organic substance. The molecule of protoplasm, like all very high compounds, and, in fact, like almost all nitrogenous compounds, is in a considerable degree explosive. During the expansion of the protoplasm, the medium is pushing against it with a force of its own ”

“ Proceeding from this general law, and reviewing a variety of cases in which gases lie contiguous to membranes, we are enabled to demonstrate or to explain the following more special laws: 1st. The human or animal body, when surrounded with any gas not already contained within the body, absorbs it rapidly; such, for instance, as the gases of putrefying matters: which helps to explain malaria. 2d. The carbonic acid gas of effervescing drinks, evolved in the stomach, permeates its membranes, and rapidly spreads through the system. ”

“ Quite often the work has been delayed and the tunnel partly or wholly flooded. Now, you know the theory of the bends. It is that air—mostly the nitrogen in the air—is absorbed by the blood under the pressure. In coming out of the 'air' if the nitrogen is not all eliminated, it stays in the blood and, as the pressure is reduced, it expands. It is just as if you take a bottle of charged water and pull the cork suddenly. The gas rises in big bubbles. Cork it again and the gas bubbles cease to rise and finally disappear. ”

“ So that of some Bodies the Fire cannot in close Vessels make any Analysis at all, and others will in the open Air fly away in the Forms of Flowers or Liquors, before the Heat can prove able to divide them into their Principles. And this may hold, whether the various similar parts of a Concrete be combin’d by Nature or by Art; For in factitious Sal Armoniack we finde the common and the Urinous Salts so well mingled, that both in the open Fire, and in subliming Vessels they rise together as one Salt, which seems in such Vessels irresoluble by Fire alone. ”

“ Tenthly, therefore the dissolving parts of the Air are but few, that is, it seems of the nature of those Saline menstruums, or spirits, that have very much flegme mixt with the spirits, and therefore a small parcel of it is quickly glutted, and will dissolve no more; and therefore unless some fresh part of this menstruum be apply’d to the body to be dissolv’d, the action ceases, and the body leaves to be dissolv’d and to shine, which is the Indication of it, though plac’d or kept in the greatest heat ”

“ Within the vessels of the vascular system, as mucilaginous lining, minus-pressure matter assists the circulation of fluids, on the foregoing capillary principle. The slime on deep-water fish, seems provided to lessen the pressure of the water on the inhabitants of those seas. Minus-pressure matter on one side only of a body, destroys the equilibrium, and promotes the motion of the body; and generally, the partial action, implied by motion, of the medium of space on bodies or their parts, is promoted by interposed minus-pressure matter in every instance of physical change. ”

“ Exhalations rise not only from the water itself, but also from every crack and crevice of the rocks, which give out heat everywhere, so that the people there have dug out certain places in which a man may lie down and get the heat of the exhalations and fall into a sweat. M. de Montaigne took a little of the water in his mouth, after it had lost its excessive heat by standing awhile, and found it tasted more of salt than of anything else. ”

“ Assigne them. Thus in the Distillation (for Instance) of Man’s Blood, the Fire do’s First begin to Dissolve the Nexus or Cement of the Body; and then the Water, being the most (87) Volatile, and Easy to be Extracted, is either by the Igneous Atomes, or the Agitation they are put into by the Fire, first carried up, till Forsaken by what carried it up, its Weight sinks it down into the Receiver: but all this while the other Principles of the Concrete Remain Unsever’d, and Require a stronger Degree of Heat to make a Separation of its more Fixt Elements ”

“ The study of moneric protoplasm has disclosed that so-called contractility is not merely a property of the living substance, but that it is its function, stimulated by the dynamical influences of the medium, and effected by means of chemical disintegration. The organic molecule, before it experienced its chemical, its functional rupture, was held together by the bond of inwrought chemical affinities. ”

“ Subject a sparrow to a pressure of twenty atmospheres, and the bird is thrown into convulsions, stronger than those produced by tetanus or strychnin, convulsions which soon end in death. If pure oxygen is used, a pressure of only five atmospheres kills the sparrow. But—and mark this—if the air be deficient in oxygen, the pressure of twenty atmospheres does not produce even a tremor. So, you see, Bill," he concluded, "we could descend to a very great depth in an atmosphere poor in oxygen." ”

“ The same constancy of transmission is observable when we operate on sources of a temperature yet lower than that of boiling water; such, for instance, as vessels containing this liquid heated to 40° or 50°. It is observable also when we employ pieces of rock salt 15mm or 20mm thick. I have placed all the flakes of salt that I could dispose of side by side, so that the thickness of them all amounted to 86mm. The quantity of heat transmitted by this series of flakes was considerably less than 93100 because of the great number of successive reflexions ”

“ Monoblepsis, mon-ō-blep′sis, n. a condition of vision more distinct when one eye only is used. [Gr. monos, single, blepsis, sight.]
Monocarbonate, mon-ō-kar′bō-nāt, n. a carbonate in which both hydrogen atoms of the acid are replaced by basic elements.
Monocardian, mon-ō-kär′di-an, adj. having a single heart, as fishes and reptiles. [Gr. monos, single, kardia, the heart.]
Monocarpous, mon-ō-kärp′us, adj. bearing fruit only once, as wheat, and all annual plants.—n. Mon′ocarp. [Gr. monos, single, karpos, fruit.] ”

“ By the intervention of such an envelop, we may suppose the action of the body upon the medium to be so retarded as not sensibly to disturb the uniformity of pressure and temperature in the latter.
When the body is not in a state of thermodynamic equilibrium, its state is not one of those which are represented by our surface. The body, however, as a whole has a certain volume, entropy, and enegy, which are equal to the sums of the volumes, etc., of its parts. ”

“ Cautious application of heat often increases, not only the sensibility, but also the power of self-recovery. High temperature, however, produces erratic behaviour by causing violent molecular disturbance.
Influence of pressure.—Pressure also has pronounced effect on molecular response. Moderate increase of pressure increases the sensibility, but too great an increase may cause a loss of sensibility. In substances which are nearly neutral, pressure variation may even cause reversal of response. ”

“ I hold that the sympathetic neutral flow which exists in this remote region is the latent power that, under the disintegration of water, is liberated; showing immense volume and infinite pressure. The same condition of latent power exists in metallic masses and, paradoxical as it may seem, exerts its force, under the proper exciter, only in a negative attractive way, while in water in a positive one. In minerals under liberation this latent power seeks its medium of tenuous equilibrium, leaving behind an impalpable dust, that represents molecular dissociation. ”

“ Sixthly, that in this dissolution of bodies by the Air, a certain part is united and mixt, or dissolv’d and turn’d into the Air, and made to fly up and down with it in the same manner as a metalline or other body dissolved into any menstruums, does follow the motions and progresses of that menstruum till it be precipitated. ”

“ There is a beautiful phenomenon which accompanies the expansion of ether under the influence of heat. Placed in a flask to which heat is applied, the ether will go off in vapour; and as the heat increases, the vapour will gradually light up into a lovely flame. The expansibility of air, which is vapour in a permanent form, can be shown by experiment. If we tie up an empty or collapsed bladder, and place it in a vessel over an air-pump, we may see, as we withdraw the air from the vessel, and so diminish its pressure, the bladder gradually expand and swell as it does under inflation. ”

“ For when ever any Menstruum or other Additament is Employ’d, together with the Fire to Obtain a Sulphur or a Salt from 84a Body, We may well take the Freedom to Examine, whether or no That Menstruum do barely Help to Separate the Principle Obtain’d by It, or whether there Intervene not a Coalition of the Parts of the Body Wrought upon with Those of the Menstruum, whereby the Produc’d Concrete may be Judg’d to Result from the Union of Both. ”

“ I call it hypochondriac melancholy, to distinguish it from the other two; for the celebrated Galen establishes and decides in a most learned manner, as is usual with him, that there are three species of the disease which we call melancholy, so called, not only by the Latins, but also by the Greeks; which in this case is worthy of remark: the first, which arises from a direct disease of the brain; the second, which proceeds from the whole of the blood, made and rendered atrabilious ”

“ If any obstructing blood or other fluid should be deposited in quantities great enough to stop other fluids from passing on their way, Nature will fire up its engine to remove such deposits by converting fluids into gas. As heat and motion have much to do as remedies, we may expect fever and pain until nature's furnace produces heat, forms and converts its fluids into gas and other deposits, and passes them through the excretories to space, and allows the body to work normally again. ”

“ I am told that the severest cases of neuralgia have found instantaneous and thorough relief by the addition of six or eight atmospheres to the usual pressure of air upon the surface of the body. There is no reason why the condensation might not be continued to twenty or more, the increased density causing no uneasiness to those within the box, the same equilibrium between internal and outward pressure that exists everywhere in the air being maintained here. ”

“ It suffers no appreciable loss when the thickness of the plates is varied within certain limits. Its properties of transmission therefore bear a close resemblance to those of light and solar heat. Let us now direct our attention to the rays which issue from the last two screens. The opake bodies transmit nearly the half of them; the diaphanous substances intercept them in very different quantities, and the portions transmitted are considerably diminished by increasing the thickness of the flakes. ”

“ Even when a body exhibits no fluid properties at its actual temperature, if its surface has been formed at a higher temperature, at which the body was fluid, and the change from the fluid to the solid state has been by insensible gradations, we may suppose that the value of coincided with the superficial tension until the body was decidedly solid, and that they will only differ so far as they may be differently affected by subsequent variations of temperature and of the stresses applied to the solid. ”

“ We will now consider the stability of a fluid enclosed in a rigid envelop which is non-conducting to heat and impermeable to all the components of the fluid. The fluid is supposed initially homogeneous in the sense in which we have before used the word, i.e., uniform in every respect throughout its whole extent. Let be the ultimate components of the fluid; we may then consider every body which can be formed out of the fluid to be composed of , and that in only one way. Let denote the quantities of these substances in any such body, and let , denote its energy, entropy, and volume. ”

“ The hardness is 51/2, and the specific gravity 5·1–5·2. Light which has traversed a crystal or grain of monazite exhibits a characteristic absorption spectrum, and this affords a ready means of detecting the mineral. ”

“ In attempting to explain these singularities, it seems to me that we must resort to one of two suppositions: we must either conceive that the fluid menstruum during the deposition of any particular and extensive formation, must have contained in different places different chemical ingredients; or we must conclude that the alteration in structure in an individual formation, has not so much been derived from the addition or substraction of certain chemical ingredients as from the proportion in which these ingredients have crystallized. ”

“ Rock salt reduced to a plate and successively exposed to radiations of the same force from different sources always transmits immediately the same quantity of heat. A plate of any other diathermanous substance will, under the same circumstances, transmit quantities less considerable in proportion as the temperature of the source is less elevated: but the differences between one transmission and another decrease as the plate on which we operate is more attenuated. ”

“ Recent investigations point to the conclusion that the immediate cause of the arrest of vitality, in the first place, and of its destruction, in the second, is the coagulation of certain substances in the protoplasm, and that the latter contains various coagulable matters, which solidify at different temperatures. And it remains to be seen, how far the death of any form of living matter, at a given temperature, depends on the destruction of its fundamental substance at that heat, and how far death is brought about by the coagulation of merely accessory compounds. ”