Encyclopaedia Britannica Volume 2, Part 1 Part 14

ANILINE, PHENYLAMINE, or AMIn.o.bENZENE, (C_{6}H_{5}NH_{2}), an organic base first obtained from the destructive distillation of indigo in 1826 by O. Unverdorben (_Pogg. Ann._, 1826, 8, p. 397), who named it crystalline. In 1834, F. Runge (_Pogg. Ann._, 1834, 31, p. 65; 32, p. 331) isolated from coal-tar a substance which produced a beautiful blue colour on treatment with chloride of lime; this he named kyanol or cyanol. In 1841, C.J. Fritzsche showed that by treating indigo with caustic potash it yielded an oil, which he named aniline, from the specific name of one of the indigo-yielding plants, _Indigofera anil_, _anil_ being derived from the Sanskrit _n[=i]la_, dark-blue, and _n[=i]l[=a]_, the indigo plant. About the same time N.N. Zinin found that on reducing nitrobenzene, a base was formed which he named benzidam. A.W. von Hofmann investigated these variously prepared substances, and proved them to be identical, and thenceforth they took their place as one body, under the name aniline or phenylamine. Pure aniline is a basic substance of an oily consistence, colourless, melting at -8 and boiling at 184 C. On exposure to air it absorbs oxygen and resinifies, becoming deep brown in colour; it ignites readily, burning with a large smoky flame. It possesses a somewhat pleasant vinous odour and a burning aromatic taste; it is a highly acrid poison.

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Aniline is a weak base and forms salts with the mineral acids. Aniline hydrochloride forms large colourless tables, which become greenish on exposure; it is the "aniline salt" of commerce. The sulphate forms beautiful white plates. Although aniline is but feebly basic, it precipitates zinc, aluminium and ferric salts, and on warming expels ammonia from its salts. Aniline combines directly with alkyl iodides to form secondary and tertiary amines; boiled with carbon disulphide it gives sulphocarbanilide (diphenyl thio-urea), CS(NHC_{6}H_{5})_{2}, which may be decomposed into phenyl mustard-oil, C_{6}H_{5}CNS, and triphenyl guanidine, C_{6}H_{5}N: C(NHC_{6}H_{5})_{2}. Sulphuric acid at 180 gives sulphanilic acid, NH2.C_{6}H_{4}.SO_{3}H. Anilides, compounds in which the amino group is subst.i.tuted by an acid radical, are prepared by heating aniline with certain acids; antifebrin or acetanilide is thus obtained from acetic acid and aniline. The oxidation of aniline has been carefully investigated. In alkaline solution azobenzene results, while a.r.s.enic acid produces the violet-colouring matter violaniline. Chromic acid converts it into quinone, while chlorates, in the presence of certain metallic salts (especially of vanadium), give aniline black. Hydrochloric acid and pota.s.sium chlorate give chloranil. Pota.s.sium permanganate in neutral solution oxidizes it to nitrobenzene, in alkaline solution to azobenzene, ammonia and oxalic acid, in acid solution to aniline black. Hypochlorous acid gives para-amino phenol and para-amino diphenylamine (E. Bamberger, _Ber._, 1898, 31, p. 1522).

The great commercial value of aniline is due to the readiness with which it yields, directly or indirectly, valuable dyestuffs. The discovery of mauve in 1858 by Sir W.H. Perkin was the first of a series of dyestuffs which are now to be numbered by hundreds.

Reference should be made to the articles DYEING, FUCHSINE, SAFRANINE, INDULINES, for more details on this subject. In addition to dyestuffs, it is a starting-product for the manufacture of many drugs, such as antipyrine, antifebrin, &c. Aniline is manufactured by reducing nitrobenzene with iron and hydrochloric acid and steam-distilling the product. The purity of the product depends upon the quality of the benzene from which the nitrobenzene was prepared. In commerce three brands of aniline are distinguished--aniline oil for blue, which is pure aniline; aniline oil for red, a mixture of equimolecular quant.i.ties of aniline and ortho- and para-toluidines; and aniline oil for safranine, which contains aniline and ortho-toluidine, and is obtained from the distillate (_echappes_) of the fuchsine fusion.

Monomethyl and dimethyl aniline are colourless liquids prepared by heating aniline, aniline hydro-chloride and methyl alcohol in an autoclave at 220. They are of great importance in the colour industry. Monomethyl aniline boils at 193-195; dimethyl aniline at 192.

ANIMAL (Lat. _animalis_, from _anima_, breath, soul), a term first used as a noun or adjective to denote a living thing, but now used to designate one branch of living things as opposed to the other branch known as plants. Until the discovery of protoplasm, and the series of investigations by which it was established that the cell was a fundamental structure essentially alike in both animals and plants (see CYTOLOGY), there was a vague belief that plants, if they could really be regarded as animated creatures, exhibited at the most a lower grade of life. We know now that in so far as life and living matter can be investigated by science, animals and plants cannot be described as being alive in different degrees. Animals and plants are extremely closely related organisms, alike in their fundamental characters, and each grading into organisms which possess some of the characters of both cla.s.ses or kingdoms (see PROTISTA). The actual boundaries between animals and plants are artificial; they are rather due to the ingenious a.n.a.lysis of the systematist than actually resident in objective nature. The most obvious distinction is that the animal cell-wall is either absent or composed of a nitrogenous material, whereas the plant cell-wall is composed of a carbohydrate material--cellulose. The animal and the plant alike require food to repair waste, to build up new tissue and to provide material which, by chemical change, may liberate the energy which appears in the processes of life. The food is alike in both cases; it consists of water, certain inorganic salts, carbohydrate material and proteid material. Both animals and plants take their water and inorganic salts directly as such. The animal cell can absorb its carbohydrate and proteid food only in the form of carbohydrate and proteid; it is dependent, in fact, on the pre-existence of these organic substances, themselves the products of living matter, and in this respect the animal is essentially a parasite on existing animal and plant life.

The plant, on the other hand, if it be a green plant, containing chlorophyll, is capable, in the presence of light, of building up both carbohydrate material and proteid material from inorganic salts; if it be a fungus, devoid of chlorophyll, whilst it is dependent on pre-existing carbohydrate material and is capable of absorbing, like an animal, proteid material as such, it is able to build up its proteid food from material chemically simpler than proteid. On these basal differences are founded most of the characters which make the higher forms of animal and plant life so different. The animal body, if it be composed of many cells, follows a different architectural plan; the compact nature of its food, and the yielding nature of its cell-walls, result in a form of structure consisting essentially of tubular or spherical ma.s.ses of cells arranged concentrically round the food-cavity. The relatively rigid nature of the plant cell-wall, and the attenuated inorganic food-supply of plants, make possible and necessary a form of growth in which the greatest surface is exposed to the exterior, and thus the plant body is composed of flattened laminae and elongated branching growths. The distinctions between animals and plants are in fact obviously secondary and adaptive, and point clearly towards the conception of a common origin for the two forms of life, a conception which is made still more probable by the existence of many low forms in which the primary differences between animals and plants fade out.

An animal may be defined as a living organism, the protoplasm of which does not secrete a cellulose cell-wall, and which requires for its existence proteid material obtained from the living or dead bodies of existing plants or animals. The common use of the word animal as the equivalent of mammal, as opposed to bird or reptile or fish, is erroneous.

The cla.s.sification of the animal kingdom is dealt with in the article ZOOLOGY.

(P.C.M.)

ANIMAL HEAT. Under this heading is discussed the physiology of the temperature of the animal body.

The higher animals have within their bodies certain sources of heat, and also some mechanism by means of which both the production and loss of heat can be regulated. This is conclusively shown by the fact that both in summer and winter their mean temperature remains the same. But it was not until the introduction of thermometers that any exact data on the temperature of animals could be obtained. It was then found that local differences were present, since heat production and heat loss vary considerably in different parts of the body, although the circulation of the blood tends to bring about a mean temperature of the internal parts. Hence it is important to determine the temperature of those parts which most nearly approaches to that of the internal organs. Also for such results to be comparable they must be made in the same situation. The r.e.c.t.u.m gives most accurately the temperature of internal parts, or in women and some animals the v.a.g.i.n.a, uterus or bladder.

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Occasionally that of the urine as it leaves the urethra may be of use.

More usually the temperature is taken in the mouth, axilla or groin.

_Warm and Cold Blooded Animals_.--By numerous observations upon men and animals, John Hunter showed that the essential difference between the so-called warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals lies in the constancy of the temperature of the former, and the variability of the temperature of the latter. Those animals high in the scale of evolution, as birds and mammals, have a high temperature almost constant and independent of that of the surrounding air, whereas among the lower animals there is much variation of body temperature, dependent entirely on their surroundings. There are, however, certain mammals which are exceptions, being warm-blooded during the summer, but cold-blooded during the winter when they hibernate; such are the hedgehog, bat and dormouse. John Hunter suggested that two groups should be known as "animals of permanent heat at all atmospheres" and "animals of a heat variable with every atmosphere," but later Bergmann suggested that they should be known as "h.o.m.oiothermic" and "poikilothermic" animals. But it must be remembered there is no hard and fast line between the two groups. Also, from work recently done by J.O. Wakelin Barratt, it has been shown that under certain pathological conditions a warm-blooded (h.o.m.oiothermic) animal may become for a time cold-blooded (poikilothermic). He has shown conclusively that this condition exists in rabbits suffering from rabies during the last period of their life, the rectal temperature being then within a few degrees of the room temperature and varying with it. He explains this condition by the a.s.sumption that the nervous mechanism of heat regulation has become paralysed. The respiration and heart-rate being also r.e.t.a.r.ded during this period, the resemblance to the condition of hibernation is considerable. Again, Sutherland Simpson has shown that during deep anaesthesia a warm-blooded animal tends to take the same temperature as that of its environment. He demonstrated that when a monkey is kept deeply anaesthetized with ether and is placed in a cold chamber, its temperature gradually falls, and that when it has reached a sufficiently low point (about 25 C. in the monkey), the employment of an anaesthetic is no longer necessary, the animal then being insensible to pain and incapable of being roused by any form of stimulus; it is, in fact, narcotized by cold, and is in a state of what may be called "artificial hibernation." Once again this is explained by the fact that the heat-regulating mechanism has been interfered with. Similar results have been obtained from experiments on cats. These facts--with many others--tend to show that the power of maintaining a constant temperature has been a gradual development, as Darwin's theory of evolution suggests, and that anything that interferes with the due working of the higher nerve-centres puts the animal back again, for the time being, on to a lower plane of evolution.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Chart showing diurnal variation in body temperature, ranging from about 37.5 C. from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M., and falling to about 36.3 C. from 2 A.M to 6 A.M.]

_Variations in the Temperature of Man and some other Animals_.--As stated above, the temperature of warm-blooded animals is maintained with but slight variation. In health under normal conditions the temperature of man varies between 36 C. and 38 C., or if the thermometer be placed in the axilla, between 36.25 C. and 37.5 C.

In the mouth the reading would be from .25 C. to 1.5 C. higher than this; and in the r.e.c.t.u.m some .9 C. higher still. The temperature of infants and young children has a much greater range than this, and is susceptible of wide divergencies from comparatively slight causes.

Of the lower warm-blooded animals, there are some that appear to be cold-blooded at birth. Kittens, rabbits and puppies, if removed from their surroundings shortly after birth, lose their body heat until their temperature has fallen to within a few degrees of that of the surrounding air. But such animals are at birth blind, helpless and in some cases naked. Animals who are born when in a condition of greater development can maintain their temperature fairly constant. In strong, healthy infants a day or two old the temperature rises slightly, but in that of weakly, ill-developed children it either remains stationary or falls. The cause of the variable temperature in infants and young immature animals is the imperfect development of the nervous regulating mechanism.

The average temperature falls slightly from infancy to p.u.b.erty and again from p.u.b.erty to middle age, but after that stage is pa.s.sed the temperature begins to rise again, and by about the eightieth year is as high as in infancy. A diurnal variation has been observed dependent on the periods of rest and activity, the maximum ranging from 10 A.M.

to 6 P.M., the minimum from 11 P.M. to 3 A.M. Sutherland Simpson and J.J. Galbraith have recently done much work on this subject. In their first experiments they showed that in a monkey there is a well-marked and regular diurnal variation of the body temperature, and that by reversing the daily routine this diurnal variation is also reversed.

The diurnal temperature curve follows the periods of rest and activity, and is not dependent on the incidence of day and night; in monkeys which are active during the night and resting during the day, the body temperature is highest at night and lowest through the day.

They then made observations on the temperature of animals and birds of nocturnal habit, where the periods of rest and activity are naturally the reverse of the ordinary through habit and not from outside interference. They found that in nocturnal birds the temperature is highest during the natural period of activity (night) and lowest during the period of rest (day), but that the mean temperature is lower and the range less than in diurnal birds of the same size. That the temperature curve of diurnal birds is essentially similar to that of man and other h.o.m.oiothermal animals, except that the maximum occurs earlier in the afternoon and the minimum earlier in the morning. Also that the curves obtained from rabbit, guinea-pig and dog were quite similar to those from man. The mean temperature of the female was higher than that of the male in all the species examined whose s.e.x had been determined.

Meals sometimes cause a slight elevation, sometimes a slight depression--alcohol seems always to produce a fall. Exercise and variations of external temperature within ordinary limits cause very slight change, as there are many compensating influences at work, which are discussed later. Even from very active exercise the temperature does not rise more than one degree, and if carried to exhaustion a fall is observed. In travelling from very cold to very hot regions a variation of less than one degree occurs, and the temperature of those living in the tropics is practically identical with those dwelling in the Arctic regions.

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_Limits compatible with Life._--There are limits both of heat and cold that a warm-blooded animal can bear, and other far wider limits that a cold-blooded animal may endure and yet live. The effect of too extreme a cold is to lessen metabolism, and hence to lessen the production of heat. Both katabolic and anabolic changes share in the depression, and though less energy is used up, still less energy is generated. This diminished metabolism tells first on the central nervous system, especially the brain and those parts concerned in consciousness.

Both heart-beat and respiration-number become diminished, drowsiness supervenes, becoming steadily deeper until it pa.s.ses into the sleep of death. Occasionally, however, convulsions may set in towards the end, and a death somewhat similar to that of asphyxia takes place. In some recent experiments on cats performed by Sutherland Simpson and Percy T. Herring, they found them unable to survive when the rectal temperature was reduced below 16 C. At this low temperature respiration became increasingly feeble, the heart-impulse usually continued after respiration had ceased, the beats becoming very irregular, apparently ceasing, then beginning again. Death appeared to be mainly due to asphyxia, and the only certain sign that it had taken place was the loss of knee jerks. On the other hand, too high a temperature hurries on the metabolism of the various tissues at such a rate that their capital is soon exhausted. Blood that is too warm produces dyspnoea and soon exhausts the metabolic capital of the respiratory centre. The rate of the heart is quickened, the beats then become irregular and finally cease. The central nervous system is also profoundly affected, consciousness may be lost, and the patient falls into a comatose condition, or delirium and convulsions may set in. All these changes can be watched in any patient suffering from an acute fever. The lower limit of temperature that man can endure depends on many things, but no one can survive a temperature of 45 C. (113 F.) or above for very long. Mammalian muscle becomes rigid with heat rigor at about 50 C., and obviously should this temperature be reached the sudden rigidity of the whole body would render life impossible. H.M.

Vernon has recently done work on the death temperature and paralysis temperature (temperature of heat rigor) of various animals. He found that animals of the same cla.s.s of the animal kingdom showed very similar temperature values, those from the Amphibia examined being 38.5 C., Fishes 39, Reptilia 45, and various Molluscs 46. Also in the case of Pelagic animals he showed a relation between death temperature and the quant.i.ty of solid const.i.tuents of the body, _Cestus_ having lowest death temperature and least amount of solids in its body. But in the higher animals his experiments tend to show that there is greater variation in both the chemical and physical characters of the protoplasm, and hence greater variation in the extreme temperature compatible with life.

_Regulation of Temperature._--The heat of the body is generated by the chemical changes--those of oxidation--undergone not by any particular substance or in any one place, but by the tissues at large. Wherever destructive metabolism (katabolism) is going on, heat is being set free. When a muscle does work it also gives rise to heat, and if this is estimated it can be shown that the muscles alone during their contractions provide far more heat than the whole amount given out by the body. Also it must be remembered that the heart--also a muscle,--never resting, does in the 24 hours no inconsiderable amount of work, and hence must give rise to no inconsiderable amount of heat.

From this it is clear that the larger proportion of total heat of the body is supplied by the muscles. These are essentially the "thermogenic tissues." Next to the muscles as heat generators come the various secretory glands, especially the liver, which appears never to rest in this respect. The brain also must be a source of heat, since its temperature is higher than that of the arterial blood with which it is supplied. Also a certain amount of heat is produced by the changes which the food undergoes in the alimentary ca.n.a.l before it really enters the body. But heat while continually being produced is also continually being lost by the skin, lungs, urine and faeces.

And it is by the constant modification of these two factors, (1) heat production and (2) heat loss, that the constant temperature of a warm-blooded animal is maintained. Heat is lost to the body through the faeces and urine, respiration, conduction and radiation from the skin, and by evaporation of perspiration. The following are approximately the relative amounts of heat lost through these various channels (different authorities give somewhat different figures):--faeces and urine about 3, respiration about 20, skin (conduction, radiation and evaporation) about 77. Hence it is clear the chief means of loss are the skin and the lungs. The more air that pa.s.ses in and out of the lungs in a given time, the greater the loss of heat. And in such animals as the dog, who do not perspire easily by the skin, respiration becomes far more important.

But for man the great heat regulator is undoubtedly the skin, which regulates heat loss by its vasomotor mechanism, and also by the nervous mechanism of perspiration. Dilatation of the cutaneous vascular areas leads to a larger flow of blood through the skin, and so tends to cool the body, and _vice versa_. Also the special nerves of perspiration can increase or lessen heat loss by promoting or diminis.h.i.+ng the secretions of the skin. There are greater difficulties in the exact determination in the amount of heat produced, but there are certain well-known facts in connexion with it. A larger living body naturally produces more heat than a smaller one of the same nature, but the surface of the smaller, being greater in proportion to its bulk than that of the larger, loses heat at a more rapid rate.

Hence to maintain the same constant bodily temperature, the smaller animal must produce a relatively larger amount of heat. And in the struggle for existence this has become so.

Food temporarily increases the production of heat, the rate of production steadily rising after a meal until a maximum is reached from about the 6th to the 9th hour. If sugar be included in the meal the maximum is reached earlier; if mainly fat, later. Muscular work very largely increases the production of heat, and hence the more active the body the greater the production of heat.

But all the arrangements in the animal economy for the production and loss of heat are themselves probably regulated by the central nervous system, there being a thermogenic centre--situated above the spinal cord, and according to some observers in the optic thalamus.

AUTHORITIES.--M.S. Pembrey, "Animal Heat," in Schafer's _Textbook of Physiology_ (1898); C.R. Richet, "Chaleur," in _Dictionnaire de physiologie_ (Paris, 1898); Hale White, Croonian Lectures, _Lancet_, London, 1897; Pembrey and Nicol, _Journal of Physiology_, vol. xxiii., 1898-1899; H.M. Vernon, "Heat Rigor," _Journal of Physiology_, xxiv., 1899; H.M. Vernon, "Death Temperatures," _Journal of Physiology_, xxv., 1899; F.C. Eve, "Temperature on Nerve Cells," _Journal of Physiology_, xxvi., 1900; G. Weiss, _Comptes Rendus, Soc. de Biol._, lii., 1900; Swale Vincent and Thomas Lewis, "Heat Rigor of Muscle,"

_Journal of Physiology_, 1901; Sutherland Simpson and Percy Herring, "Cold and Reflex Action," Journal of Physiology, 1905; Sutherland Simpson, _Proceedings of Physiological Soc._, July 19, 1902; Sutherland Simpson and J.J. Galbraith, "Diurnal Variation of Body Temperature," _Journal of Physiology_, 1905; _Transactions Royal Society Edinburgh_, 1905; _Proc. Physiological Society_, p. xx., 1903; A.E. Boycott and J.S. Haldane, _Effects of High Temperatures on Man._

ANIMAL WORs.h.i.+P, an ill-defined term, covering facts ranging from the wors.h.i.+p of the real divine animal, commonly conceived as a "G.o.d-body,"

at one end of the scale, to respect for the bones of a slain animal or even the use of a respectful name for the living animal at the other end. Added to this, in many works on the subject we find reliance placed, especially for the African facts, on reports of travellers who were merely visitors to the regions on which they wrote.

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_Cla.s.sification_.--Animal cults may be cla.s.sified in two ways: (A) according to their outward form; (B) according to their inward meaning, which may of course undergo transformations.

(A) There are two broad divisions: (1) all animals of a given species are sacred, perhaps owing to the impossibility of distinguis.h.i.+ng the sacred few from the profane crowd; (2) one or a fixed number of a species are sacred. It is probable that the first of these forms is the primary one and the second in most cases a development from it due to (i.) the influence of other individual cults, (ii.) anthropomorphic tendencies, (iii.) the influence of chieftains.h.i.+p, hereditary and otherwise, (iv.) annual sacrifice of the sacred animal and mystical ideas connected therewith, (v.) syncretism, due either to unity of function or to a philosophic unification, (vi.) the desire to do honour to the species in the person of one of its members, and possibly other less easily traceable causes.

(B) Treating cults according to their meaning, which is not necessarily identical with the cause which first led to the deification of the animal in question, we can cla.s.sify them under ten specific heads: (i.) pastoral cults; (ii.) hunting cults; (iii.) cults of dangerous or noxious animals; (iv.) cults of animals regarded as human souls or their embodiment; (v.) totemistic cults; (vi.) cults of secret societies, and individual cults of tutelary animals; (vii.) cults of tree and vegetation spirits; (viii.) cults of ominous animals; (ix.) cults, probably derivative, of animals a.s.sociated with certain deities; (x.) cults of animals used in magic.

(i.) The pastoral type falls into two sub-types, in which the species (_a_) is spared and (_b_) sometimes receives special honour at intervals in the person of an individual. (See _Cattle, Buffalo_, below.)

(ii.) In hunting cults the species is habitually killed, but (_a_) occasionally honoured in the person of a single individual, or (_b_) each slaughtered animal receives divine honours. (See _Bear_, below.)

(iii.) The cult of dangerous animals is due (_a_) to the fear that the soul of the slain beast may take vengeance on the hunter, (_b_) to a desire to placate the rest of the species. (See _Leopard_, below.)

(iv.) Animals are frequently regarded as the abode, temporary or permanent, of the souls of the dead, sometimes as the actual souls of the dead. Respect for them is due to two main reasons: (_a_) the kinsmen of the dead desire to preserve the goodwill of their dead relatives; (_b_) they wish at the same time to secure that their kinsmen are not molested and caused to undergo unnecessary suffering.

(See _Serpent_, below.)

(v.) One of the most widely found modes of showing respect to animals is known as totemism (see TOTEM AND TOTEMISM), but except in decadent forms there is but little positive wors.h.i.+p; in Central Australia, however, the rites of the Wollunqua totem group are directed towards placating this mythical animal, and cannot be termed anything but religious ceremonies.