SARCINA (hat. a package), or SARCINITLA, a genus of minute plants of very low ongani,tion, sometimes reckoned among algce, and sometimes among fungi. A number of forms or species are known. The first discovered, called S. ventrieuli, was originally observed by Goodsir in matters vomited from the human stomach. It is of a roundish quadrangular form, about to of a line in diameter; the individuals generally grouped in cubes of 4, 16, or 64 in the cube, separated by rectangular stria:. Although the most common seat of sarcinw is the human stomach, they have likewise been detected in the stomach of the tortoise, the rabbit, the dog, the ape, and in the C£CCUM of the fowl; in the urine, in a considerable number of cases; in the lungs; in the faeces and intestinal canal; in the fluid of the ventricles of the brain; in cholera stools; in the fluid of hydrocele; in the bones; and Dr. Lowe has noticed its existence in stagnant water. It appears from the measuremefits of Welcher that the sarcinm occurring in urine are about half the size of those occurring in the stomach, and the aggregations of sarcina cells are also smaller.
The occurrence of the sarcina in the urine, the fluid of the ventricles of the brain, etc., is probably a phenomenon of little diagnostic or pathological impor tance. Its appearance in vomited fluids is, however, characteristic of a peculiar and important form of dyspepsia. The vomited matter in these cases has a faint acid smell, like that of fermenting wort, and is obviously in a state of fermentation. After standing a few hours it becomes covered with a thick, brownish, yeast-like froth, and deposits a brown flaky sediment. On examining the froth and the deposit under the microscope sarcime are found in great abundance, together with the toruhe characteristic of yeast (q.v ). The fluid is always acid, if sarcinte are present. The amount of vomited matter is always large, and sometimes enormous. It is usually ejected in the morning, after a
night spent awake from a sense of heat, gurgling, and distention in the epigastrm region; and its discharge gives almost immediate relief. Dr. Budd, one of the highest authorities in di-eases of the stomach, believes that the disease consists, primarily and essentially, in some organic change, which prevents that organ from completely emptying itself, and which causes a secretion from its coats, capable, when mixed with food, of undergoing or exciting a process of fermentation; and that the development of the sarciare bears to this process, or to some stage of it, the same relation which the development of torulte bears to simple alcoholic fermentation. The well-known power of sulphurous acid in checking the fermentative process induced prof. Jenner to try the effect of sulphite of soda—a salt which readily yields its sulphurous acid—in this disease; and experience has fully confirmed the accuracy of Jenner's induction; for this salt, administered soon after a meal, or when the fermenting process is commencing, in doses varying from 10 grains to a dram. dissolved in water, is the most effectual remedy at present known for reliev ing this disorder. The hyposulphite of soda, in somewhat larger doses, has a similar action.
sARCINE (Gr. sarx, gen. sarcos, flesh) is the name now given to a nitrogenous sub stance (L1oli4N402) which has been obtained from the muscular tissue of the horse, ox, and hare; and from various glandular organs, as the liver and the spleen of the ox, she thymus gland of thd calf, anu the human liver in cases of acute atrophy of that organ, in which ease it is associated with xanthine a substance differing front it only by two atoms of oxygen. It is identical wit.it tau substance formerly known as bypoxituthine.