The Chemistry of Cookery

been made to determine accurately the quantity thus removed. Does the skin excrete nitrogenous matter that may be, like urea, a product of the degradation or destruction of muscular tissue? The following passage from Lehmann’s ‘Physiological Chemistry’ (vol. ii. p. 389), shows that the skin throws out plenty of nitrogen obtained from somewhere: ‘It has been shown by the experiments of Milly, Jurine, Ingenhouss, Spallanzani, Abernethy, Barruel, and Collard di Martigny, that _gases_, and especially _carbonic acid_ and _nitrogen_, are likewise exhaled with the liquid secretion of the sudiparious glands. According to the last-named experimentalist the ratio between these two gases is very variable; thus, in the gas developed after vegetable food there is a preponderance of carbonic acid, and, after animal food, there is an excess of nitrogen. Abernethy found that on an average the collective gas contained rather more than two-thirds of carbonic acid and rather less than one-third of nitrogen.’ But it appears that less gas is exhaled when there is much liquid perspiration. Lehmann’s summary of the experiments of Abernethy, Brunner, and Valentin (vol. ii. p. 391), gives the amount of hourly exudation, under ordinary circumstances, as 50·71 grammes of water, 0·25 of a gramme of carbon, and 0·92 of a gramme of nitrogen. This amounts to 21½ grammes of nitrogen per day in the _insensible_ perspiration; three-quarters of an ounce avoirdupois, or as much nitrogen as is contained in one pound and a half of natural living muscle. That the liquid perspiration contains compounds of nitrogen, and just such compounds as would result from the degradation of nitrogenous tissue, is unquestionable. As Lehmann says (vol. ii. p. 389), ‘the sweat very easily decomposes, and gives rise to the secondary formation of ammonia.’ Simon and Berzelius found salts of ammonia in the sweat: that the ammonia is combined both with hydrochloric acid and with organic acids: that it probably exists as carbonate of ammonia in alkaline sweat. The existence of urea in sweat appears to be uncertain; some chemists assert its presence, others deny it. Favre and Schottin, for example, who have both studied the subject