This alkali, when thoroughly calcined, powerfully attracts the moisture of the air, and melts into an unctuous alkaline liquor, improperly called Oil of Tartar per deliquium. This is the alkali generally used in making the Terra Foliata, mentioned under the head of Vinegar; for which reason this combination is called Terra Foliata Tartari; a name suitable enough. But the same cannot be said of the other name, Regenerated Tartar, which is also given it. It is true, that on this occasion an oily acid is restored to the earth of the Tartar, analagous to that of which the fire had deprived it: but the compound thence resulting is a neutral salt which very readily dissolves in water; whereas Tartar is manifestly acid, and not soluble, or at least hardly soluble, in water.
Crystals of Tartar combined with alkali of Tartar produce a great effervescence while they are mixing, as all acids usually do; and if the combination be brought exactly up to the point of saturation, a perfectly neutral salt is formed, which shoots into crystals, and easily dissolves in water; and this hath procured it the name of Soluble Tartar. It is also called the Vegetable Salt, as being obtained from vegetables only; and again, Tartarised Tartar, because it consists of the acid and the alkali of Tartar combined together.
Crystals of Tartar combined with alkalis procured from the ashes of maritime plants, such as Soda, which alkalis resemble the basis of sea-salt, form likewise a neutral salt, which crystallizes well, and dissolves easily in water. This salt is another sort of soluble Tartar. It is called Saignette's Salt, from the inventor's name.
Both the Vegetable Salt and Saignette's Salt are gently purgative soaps, and much used in Medicine.
Tartar likewise dissolves the absorbent earths, as lime, chalk, &c. and with them forms neutral salts which are soluble in water[3]. It even attacks metallic bodies, and when combined with them becomes soluble. A soluble Tartar for medical use is prepared with Crystals of Tartar and Iron: the metallic salt thereby produced hath the name of Chalybeated Soluble Tartar. This salt attracts the moisture of the air, and is one of those which do not crystallize.
Crystallized Tartar acts also upon several other metallic substances: for instance, it dissolves the Regulus, Liver, and Glass of Antimony, and thence acquires an emetic quality: it is then called Stibiated or Emetic Tartar. It likewise dissolves Lead, and therewith forms a salt which, in the figure of its crystals, resembles Tartarised Tartar.
It is very extraordinary that Tartar, which of itself is not soluble in water, should be soluble therein when become a neutral salt by uniting either with alkalis or with absorbent earths, or even with metals. With respect to alkalis, indeed, it may be urged, that, having themselves a great affinity with water, they communicate to Tartar some of that facility with which they naturally unite therewith: but the same cannot be alledged concerning absorbent earths, and metallic substances, which water dissolves not at all, or at least with great difficulty, and in small quantity. This effect, therefore, must be attributed wholly to some change in the disposition of its parts which is to us unknown.
All the Soluble Tartars are easily decompounded by exposing them to a certain degree of heat. In distillation they yield the same principles which are obtained from Tartar; and what remains fixed in the fire, after they are thoroughly burnt, is a compound of the alkali which Tartar naturally produces, and of the alkaline or metallic substance with which it was converted into a neutral salt.
As Crystal of Tartar is the weakest of all acids, on account of the oily and earthy matters with which it is combined, Soluble Tartars are decompounded by all the acids; by any of which crystal of Tartar may be separated from the substance that serves it for a basis and renders it a neutral salt.
The other acids which are procured from vegetables, and even those which are obtainable from some animal substances, may all be referred to and compared with either Vinegar or Tartar, according to the quantities of oil or earth with which they are combined.
After all, these acids have not yet been thoroughly examined. There is great reason to think that they are no other than the mineral acids, which, in passing through the bodies of vegetables, and even of animals, undergo a considerable change, especially by contracting an union with oily matters. For, as we said before in treating of Vinegar, by freeing them from their oil they are brought very near to the nature of mineral acids; and so likewise the mineral acids acquire many of the properties of vegetable acids by being combined with oils.
CHAP. XV.
Of the Putrid Fermentation, or Putrefaction.
Every body which hath gone through the two stages of fermentation above described, that is, the spirituous and the acetous fermentation, being left to itself in a due degree of warmth, which varies according to the subject, advances to the last stage of fermentation; that is, to putrefaction.
It is proper to observe, before we go any further, that the converse of this proposition is not true; that is, it is not necessary that a body should successively pass through the spirituous and the acetous fermentation, before it can arrive at the putrid; but that, as certain substances fall into the acetous without having gone through the spirituous fermentation, so others begin to putrify without having undergone either the spirituous or the acetous fermentation; of which last kind are, for instance, most animal substances. When therefore we represented these three sorts of fermentation as three different degrees or stages of one and the same fermentation, we supposed it to be excited in a body susceptible of fermentation in its full extent.
However, there is still room to think that every substance which is capable of fermenting always passes necessarily through these three different stages; but that the substances most disposed thereto pass with such rapidity through the first, and even the second, that they arrive at the third before our senses can perceive the least signs of either of the two former. This opinion is not destitute of probability: yet it is not supported by proofs sufficiently strong and numerous to compel our assent.
When a body is in a putrefying state it is easy to discover (as in the two sorts of fermentation already treated of) by the vapours which rise from it, by the opacity which invades it, if a pellucid liquor, and frequently even by a greater degree of heat than is found in the two other sorts of fermentation, that an intestine motion is begun among its constituent parts, which lasts till the whole be entirely putrefied.
The effect of this intestine motion is in this, as in the two other sorts of fermentation, to break the union, and change the disposition, of the particles constituting the body in which it is excited, and to produce a new combination. This is brought about by a mechanism to which we are strangers, and concerning which nothing beyond conjectures can be advanced: but these we neglect, resolving to keep wholly to facts, as the only things in Natural Philosophy that are positively certain.
If, then, we examine a substance that has undergone putrefaction, we shall soon perceive that it contains a principle which did not exist in it before. If this substance be distilled, there rises, first, by means of a very gentle heat, a saline matter which is exceedingly volatile, and affects the organ of smelling briskly and disagreeably. Nor is the aid of distillation necessary to discover the presence of this product of putrefaction: it readily manifests itself in most substances where it exists, as any one may soon be convinced by observing the different smell of fresh and of putrefied urine; for the latter not only affects the nose, but even makes the eyes smart, and irritates them so as to draw tears from them in abundance.
This saline principle which is the product of putrefaction, when separated from the other principles of the body which affords it, and collected by itself, appears either in the