ON THE COMPARATIVE ANTISEPTIC POWERS OF VEGETABLE INFUSIONS PREPARED
WITH LIME, &c.
Sir John Pringle, in the Appendix to his excellent Observations
on the Diseases of the Army, allows lime water to possess but a
slight antiseptic quality. Doctor Macbride on the contrary asserts,
that it has great power in resisting putrefaction, but at the same
time acknowledges that it destroys the cohesion of the constituent
particles of animal substances, and therefore cannot be called a
_true_ antiseptic, as it absorbs the fixable air from them, and only
preserves them sweet by confining it within their texture, into which
the lime is enabled to insinuate itself in this dissolved state. As
even this effect, if possessed by the tinctures of the antiseptic
vegetables prepared with lime or its water, would be an objection
to their administration in putrid diseases, I resolved to determine
by experiment, how far their antiseptic powers were increased or
diminished by this mode of preparation: and I thought it probable, as
those prepared with the latter contain no lime when filtered, and yet
in the extraction of the tinctures the vegetables are deprived of, at
least, a part of their air, they might be rendered less able to resist
putrefaction than either the infusions prepared with distilled water,
or those with the addition of quick-lime. How far this reasoning was
just, the result will discover.