XII. On the conversion of animal muscle into a substance much resembling spermaceti

Abstract

It is a matter of great curiosity to observe, after any fact has been well ascertained, how many things might have led to a much earlier investigation; particularly so, had the writings of many great men been equally examined, with those observations which, though apparently very trifling, have often excited general attention. The conversion of animal muscle into a fatty matter gives us a very striking example. The celebrated Sir Thomas Brown, in his very learned and curious treatise intituled Hydriotaphia, assures us, that he has found a soap-like substance in an hydropical body. His words are as follows, viz. “In an hydropical body, ten years buried in “a church-yard, we met with a fat concretion, where the nitre “of the earth, and the salt and lixivoius liquor of the body, “had coagulated large lumps of fat into the consistence of “the hardest Castile soap; whereof part remaineth with us.ˮ