Part 1

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

Temperatures ranges, variously expressed as 54°-55°, 54°, 55° and 54° 55°, have been standardised as 54°-55°. Fractional temperatures have been standardised as XX.X°

Italics are represented thus italic, superscripts thus y^n, subscripts as y_{n}.

ADIPOCIRE, AND ITS FORMATION.

BY CHARLES M. WETHERILL, PH.D. M.D.

The formation of fat is interesting, both from a chemical and a physiological point of view. The relation of lignine starch and sugar to alcohol, afforded reasons for Liebig’s theory of the formation of fat in the body. Recent experiments by Liebig, Bopp, Guckelberger, Keller and others, on the formation of the lower terms of the series of fatty acids by the oxidation and putrefaction of the blood-forming substances, rendered possible the formation of the higher members, from albumen, fibrin and caseine, by similar means, for example, by a less intense degree of oxidation. It was thought that the study of adipocire, with a view to this question, would perhaps throw some light upon it; and upon reading all the articles within my reach, upon this body, from the time of its discovery by Fourcroy, I find a considerable difference of opinion with regard to it.

In 1785, Fourcroy examined a portion of a liver which had hung for ten years in the air in the laboratory of de la Salle; it was fatty, smooth, and unctuous to the touch. Potash lye dissolved a portion of the liver completely, forming a soap. Subsequently, when he had examined the fat of grave yards, and spermaceti, he proposed to name these three fats, viz.: of biliary calculi, spermaceti, and from grave yards, adipocire, considering them to be identical, and possessing an intermediate nature between fat and wax. Chevreul, in his fifth Memoire, corrects this error, and calls the fat of gall stones cholesterine, and that of spermaceti cetine.

In 1786-7, Fourcroy had an opportunity of studying the fat of grave yards, in the removal of the bodies from the Cemetière des Innocens, a work which lasted for two years, and which was supervised by Dr. Thouret, who was placed there to care for the health of the workmen. The substance was abundantly found, and especially in the “fouilles,” or ditches, where the slightly made coffins of the poorer classes had been piled one upon another; the trench being open for some time until it was filled with bodies, when it was covered with a slight quantity of earth; on opening the trenches after some fifteen years, the bodies were converted into adipocire; they were flattened by mutual pressure, and had impressions on their surface of the grave clothes. Fourcroy’s analysis proved it to be a soap of ammonia, with phosphate of lime, and the fat, melted at 52.5° C. He supposed adipocire to arise from the putrefaction of all animal matter, except hair, nails, and bones, for he states that in the carcasses of all animals exposed upon the borders of pieces of water, a fatty, white, fusible substance resembling spermaceti is found.

Perhaps the earliest record on this change from flesh to fat, is to be found in Lord Bacon’s Sylva Sylvarum, where he says, (article Fat,) “Nearly all flesh may be turned into a fatty substance, by cutting it into pieces and putting it into a glass covered with parchment, then letting the glass stand six or seven hours in boiling water.” This may be a profitable experiment for making fat or grease; but then it must be practised upon such flesh as is not edible, viz.: that of horses, dogs, bears, foxes, badgers, &c.

George Smith Gibbes, 1794, observed that in Oxford, in the pits where were thrown the remains of dissections, and at the bottom of which flowed a gentle current of water, large quantities of adipocire were formed. He placed a piece of beef in the river in a box pierced with holes, and also a piece in which putrefaction in the air had commenced, and adipocire resulted in both cases. He proposes to make use of this property to utilize the dead bodies of animals, and states that nitric acid will effect the same change in three or four days.

John Bostock (Nicholson’s Journal, March, 1803,) digested muscular fibre with dilute nitric acid, and washed with water: the result was a clear, yellow fat, of the consistence of tallow, melting at 33° C. Is less soluble in alcohol than Fourcroy’s substance: the greater part deposits nearly white on cooling, and the residue can be precipitated from the alcohol by water. Hot ether dissolves it and abandons it on cooling; caustic alkali forms a soap; ammonia dissolves but little of the fat.

Chevreul, on repeating this experiment with pure fibrine, could obtain no fat. Hartkol, (Ure’s Dict. art. Adipocire,) experimented for twenty-five years on adipocire, and concluded that it is not formed in dry grounds, that in moist earth the fat does not increase, but changes to a fetid mass, incapable of being made into candles. Animals in running water leave a fat after three years, which is more abundant in the intestines than in the muscles, and more fat is formed in stagnant, than in running water.

Chevreul, 1812, found the fat of church yards to contain margaric and oleic acids, combined with yellow colouring and odorous matters, also lime, potash, oxide of iron, lactic acid salts and azotized matter. He supposes the fatty acids are liberated from their glycerine by ammonia, which subsequently itself escapes, and that adipocire is thus formed from the original fat of the body.

Gay Lussac, (An. de Ch. et de Ph. iv. 71,) adopts the same views. He subjected finely chopped muscular fibre deprived of its fat by ether, to the action of water, and did not succeed in forming adipocire.

Von Bibra, (Annalen der Chem. und Ph. 56, p. 106,) in an examination of the flesh of the leg of a Peruvian mummy, a child, obtained 19.7 per cent, of fat, which he supposes to have been formed from the muscles. In comparison, dry human muscle from several analyses by himself, gives nine per cent. of fat. The muscular fibre of the mummy, after treatment with ether, presented the same appearance under the microscope, as fresh muscle placed in the same circumstances. Bibra states in the same article, that he is fully convinced of the change of muscle to fat, having obtained a human corpse in which all the parts of flesh were nearly wholly converted into fat.

Blondeau, (Comptes Rendus, Sep. 6th, 1847, and Ch. Gazette, same year, p. 422,) arrived at the same conclusion from an examination of the Roquefort cheese manufacture. This cheese is placed in dark, damp, cool cellars to ripen. Before this treatment, the cheese contained 1∕200 of its weight of fat, and after two months in the cellars the caseine was almost wholly converted into a fat, which melts at 40°, boils at 80°, and decomposes at 150°C. The unaltered caseine could be removed from it, by mere melting with boiling water. In an additional experiment, a pound of beef free from fat was slightly salted, surrounded with paste, and placed in a cellar; after two months, it had undergone no putrid decomposition, and was converted, for the greater part, into a fatty body, presenting the greatest analogy to hog’s lard. In these instances a number of parasite plants are observed on the material, and it is necessary to scrape the cheese from time to time, to free it from these mycodermic plants, which are reproduced with fresh energy. As these plants require ammonia for their development, Blondeau supposes it can only come from the nitrogen of its caseine, and that fat is one of the results of the caseine decomposition.

Gregory, (Annalen der Chem. und. Ph. 61, p. 362,) examined the adipocire of a fat hog which had died of sickness, and had been buried for fifteen years in moist ground; at the bottom of the grave was the adipocire in a layer hardly an inch in thickness; it contained ¼ stearic and ¼ margaric and oleic acids, together with from 1.5 to 3.5 per cent. lime. The glycerine was all gone, and so was the bone earth, which together with the flesh were removed, as Gregory supposes, by the carbonic acid of the rain water, leaving the original fatty acids of the body.

Prof. Hünefeld, (Jour. für Pr. ch. 7, p. 49,) examined a loaf of rye bread, which had been buried for at least eighty years in a turf-moor, and found 2.2 per cent. of a waxy or fatty substance, and he refers to an examination by Bracconot, of a mouldered wheat bread containing, among other substances, a fatty body. Hünefeld supposes that the substance of the bread was displaced by the turf material, the form of the loaf being retained; and admits the possibility of the bread substance partaking in part a change into resin and waxy humus.

R. Wagner, (Ch. Gazette, vol. 9, p. 306,) transplanted the recently removed testicles of rabbits and frogs into the abdominal cavity of fowls; the testicles of fowls into other fowls and pigeons, those of pigeons into fowls, and fresh crystalline lens into fowls and pigeons which were killed after ten or fifteen days. The testicles of frogs contained three per cent. of fat, which was augmented to 5.15 per cent. In one case the crystalline lens, after the experiment, contained 47.86 per cent. of fat; in a number of other experiments on lenses, the result was of from 7 to 15 per cent. of fat, calculated for the dry substance of the lens; carefully cleaned portions of frog intestines filled with coagulated blood of pigeons and calves, fat free muscle from the thigh of a frog, and boiled white of hen’s egg, in similar conditions, all gave fat.

These experiments were repeated by Husson and Burdach, enveloping the nitrogenized substances in bags or coatings of gutta percha, caoutchouc and collodion. They found the substance well preserved, but no change into fat; so that admission of the animal juices must conduce to it, if the change be possible. Burdach placed porous vegetable substances, as wood and tinder, in the abdominal cavity, and found a deposit of fat on them, and which was imbibed in the pores, which speaks against the change in question. Finally, Burdach determined the fat of the egg of Linnæus stagnalis, and detected a considerable increase of it during the development of the embryo; but, on the other hand, the egg contains sugar from which the fat could have been formed; and in opposition to this the quantity of sugar in hens’ eggs has been noticed rather to increase than diminish during incubation.

Quain & Virchow quoted by Lehmann, examined muscle changed in macerating troughs to adipocire, and are of opinion that the fibrine is here changed to fat. I have questioned my medical friends, who have had experience in this matter, and find them to hold the same opinions. Prof. Leidy, who macerated with water the bodies of small animals, in stoppered bottles, to obtain their skeletons, found that the deposition of adipocire upon the bones was quite abundant.

The physiological question of the formation of fat, has been fully discussed within the past ten years, and it has been proven by diet and analysis, that herbivorous animals possess more fat than is taken in their food; but whether the fat be formed wholly from non-nitrogenized or from nitrogenized bodies, or partially from both, is yet undecided. Pathological considerations from the fatty degeneration of several of the organs, where the fat is found both within and without the cell, appear likewise to have divided scientific men as to its origin, whether from a change of the proteine compounds of the organs, or from an abnormal plastic activity. The connexion of the organs of generation with the deposit of fat, and the increase of the latter after castration, is worthy of consideration; for the cutting off the supply of the highly albuminous semen, gives an impulse to the fat formation. The flesh and the fat of the body stand in an intimate relation to each other, and neither the non-nitrogenized nor the nitrogenized diet exclusively is conducive to health. Repose is necessary, (with a proper diet,) to the formation of fat, and as the activity of the muscles requires their reparation from the food, perhaps it is as much this wearing away by activity, that hinders the formation of fat, as the increased combustion by the quickened respiration. It therefore appears to me probable that both classes of food conduce to the fat formation.

It was thought that the study of adipocire would throw some light upon the question, whether fat be formed from proteine compounds, and I was surprised to find the great difference of opinion as to the formation and nature of this body, and in general, as to the changes that bodies undergo in grave yards. These various changes are ascribed by undertakers to the nature of the soil, to its dryness or moisture; but in a late removal of a grave yard in this city, some bodies were found converted into adipocire, the graves of which were contiguous to those in which decomposition had advanced to its full extent, leaving nothing but the skeleton. The preservation of some bodies seems inexplicable, according to our present knowledge, of which I may cite the well known case of General Washington, (who was not embalmed,) who having reposed in his tomb for more than forty years, was so perfectly preserved, as to have been recognised from the resemblance of his portraits. The problems proposed for this research were:—

1st. The chemical examination of different kinds of adipocire.

2d. To watch the decomposition of flesh with water, and imitating the condition of a body in moist ground.

With regard to the first of these, I possessed the following specimens of adipocire:

(a) Two from sheep buried at the country seat of the late J. P. Wetherill.