Genre:

Notes, Drollery

Subjects:

Organic Chemistry, Physiology, Heat

People mentioned:

Jean B A Dumas

    Droll responses to claims regarding the composition of various organic substances. For example, hopes that, since there is carbon in cabbages and 'albumen [...] is identical with the gluten of plants', hedges will one day 'hatch chickens'. Having explained how the oxygen and carbon in the human body produce breath and animal heat, asks why human breath has not been used to 'light the metropolis'.