pectous

[pek-tuhs]

adjective

Biochemistry.

1. of, relating to, or consisting of pectin or protopectin.

Word History and Origins

Origin of pectous¹

1860–65; pect- (representing pectic, pectin, pectose ) + -ous

Example Sentences

"If in thawing them the utmost care is not taken to thaw gradually, and at a temperature always below the natural temperature of the living animal, the fluids will pass from the frozen state through the aqueous into the pectous so rapidly that death from pectous change will be pronounced without perceiving any intermediate or life stage at all."

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If, as seems certainly to be the case, the animal dies because in the very act of trying to restore it some inequality in the process is almost sure to determine a fatal issue, some vital centre passing into the pectous state, the animal could not have been dead before restoration was attempted; for the dead cannot die again.

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In the pleasing language of the doctors, "it prevents the pectous change of colloidal matter, and so prevents rigor mortis, coagulation of blood, and solidification of nervous centres and cords."

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But when in these experiments "the pectous change occurred, all was over, and resolution into new forms of matter by putrefaction was the result."

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Besides the condition already indicated, that the muscular irritability and the nervous excitation must be simultaneously and equally reduced, it is essential that the blood, the muscular fluid, and the nervous fluid should all three remain in what Dr. Richardson calls the aqueous condition, and not become what he calls pectous, a word which we must understand to bear the same relation to the word solid or crystalline that the word "aqueous," as used by Dr. Richardson, bears to the word watery.

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