The Canadian Farm Annual for 1880 Published In

THE LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY OF THE AGE! The undersigned begs to inform the public that he has secured the sole Right to manufacture or sell in the Dominion of Canada mmw mmmwrn I THIS MACHINE WILL MARK, PLANT, HOE, AND OIG POTATOES, AT A COST OF $2.00 PER ACRE, And will yield 25 per cent, more than when planted by hand in hills. *r SEND FOR CIRCULAR _£±. DOBBIE, THOROLD, Ontario, THE CANADIAN FAEM ANNUAL FOR 1880. PUBLISHED IN CONNECTION WITH THE WEEKLY MAIL THE MAIL, CORNER OF KING AND BAY L STREETS. 1880. ~) / The Right Hon. Sir John A. Macdonald, K. O. B. Prime Minister of the Dominion of Canada. : SCIENTIFIC PBEPARATION OF FOOD Has lately occupied some public attention, and it may be an- ticipated that a more general knowledge of the chemical com- position, preparation, and physiological effects of food will be the result. In this connection we submit the latest theory for the preparation of a perfect beef tea or " hygienic food," and in soliciting a perusal, trust it may prove not uninteresting. Every vital action, mental or muscular, is accompanied wijh a proportionate waste in the structures of the body, and to renew this continuous waste is the ultimate design of all food. In order that food may be thus transformed into the various parts of the living organism, it is first essential that the materials of such structures shall be contained in the food supplied, for the human system is absolutely incapable of producing muscular fibre, cellular tissue, blood, brain, bone, etc., out of substances which do not contain the elements of which those organs are composed. And in proportion as food contains such elements in an available form, so is it termed nutritious or otherwise. Extract of Meat, or Beef Tea, is everywhere acknowledged as a harm- less stimulant, serviceable in prostration, or as an adjunct to easily digested food ; but outside medical or scientific circles it is not generally known that such extracts are simply the flavor of meat (technically the soluble salts of flesh), and as such are not in any real sense nutritious. In this connection we quote from the standard authorities, Drs. Edward Smith, H. Letheby, and Baron Liebig In the paper read by Dr. EDWARD SMITH before the British Association, August, 1868, he says of Meat Extract: "When, therefore, you have excluded fat, fibrine, gelatine and albumen, what have you left? Certainly not meat, as we understand the word, for nearly every part of it which could be transformed in the body and act aB food is excluded, therefore " Liebig's Extract of Meat" is not meat. It is clearly meat flavor. It is the plat of " Hamlet" without " Hamlet," it is meat without meat. Its true nutritive value is that which classes it with tea and coffee, and makes it a nervous stimulant. The delusion rests with those who would regard it as a nutrient in the sense of meat or bread." And again : " Let its precise value be made known. Then we shall no longer have sick and dying men, women and children fed with Liebig's Extract of Meat, under the delusion that it is nutriment in the ordinary sense. Liebig's Extract is meat flavor—a nervous stimulant, and has good qualities, BUT IT IS NOT FOOD. All that is necessary for nutrition should be added to it." " The London Examiner " says : " In making up the International Scientific Series, Dr. Edward Smith was selected aTthe ablest man in England to treat the important subject of foods." In his treatise on food, page 88,Dr. Edward Smith says .-—"There is but little 1 eft in the extract to nourish the body, and the elements which it really possesses are salts and the flavor of meat which disguises the real poverty of the substance. If it then be asked why so much of the flesh is thus unused, we answer that only the soluble parts of the meat could be obtained In this form, whilst the insoluble but most nutritious parts are left behind, and only such of the soluble parts are retained as do not put on the putrefactive process, and hence nearly all nutritious matters are excluded. If it be further asked whether the popular belief in the value of this food is altogether based upon fallacy, we answer no, for it is a valuable addition to other foods, since it yields an agreeable flavor, which leads to the inference, however incorrect, that meat is present. If, however, it be relied upon as a principal article of food for the sick, it will prove a broken staff. All that is required . for nutrition should be added to it. Liebig, in a letter to the "Times," stated that it is not nutriment in the ordinary sense, and Prof. Almen has shown the small nutritive value of this substance in the Transactions of the Medical Society of Upsala, in 1868. "Used alone for beef tea it is a delusion."—Page 89. " Dr. H. LETHEBY says : False views have been entertained of the nutritive power of Extract of Meat, for as one pound of it represents the soluble constituents of 34 pounds of lean meat, it has been assumed that its nutritive power is in like proportion, but Liebig has taken care to correct this error by showing that the Extract merely represents the soup or beef tea obtained from that quantity of meat, and as it is deficient in albumen, it must be conjoined to substances which are rich in this material."—Cantor Lectures on Food, p. 165. In the " Lancet" of November 11, 1865, Baron Liebig says :—" Were it possible to furnish the market at a reasonable price with a preparation of meat combining in itBelf the albuminous together with the extractive principles, such a preparation would have to be preferred to the " Extractum Carnis," for it would contain ALL the nutritive constituents of meat." Again :—" I have before stated that in pre- paring the Extract of Meat the albuminous principles remain in the residue; they are lost to nutrition; and this is certainly a great disadvantage." For further reference see the works of Voit, Meissner, Bunge, The British Medical J<mmal, 1872, or any late authority on the subject. To obtain a perfect Beef Tea, then, it is essential that the albumen and fibrine (which are the flesh-forming or nutritious qualities of meat) shall be added to the extractive or stimulative qualities, and that these shall be present in a form admitting of easy digestion by the most capricious and irritable stomach. This is the theory which led to the preDaration of OHNSTON'S FLUID BEEF " (the only meat extract which fulfils II the conditions of a perfect food). The." Christian Union," Glasgow, Sept., 1878, says :—" Some time ago a leading London journal threw out the suggestion that it would be a good thing if some practical analyst, or somebody else, would discover an extract of unusual strength- renewing property to resuscitate the enfeebled constitution of those who, by over- work or study, had sacrificed themselves. The idea was admirable, and one which j thousands have often expressed. And it will be surprising and welcome to such to learn that there is already an Extract just of the nature so ardently longed for. We refer to Johnston's Fluid Beef which possesses all the nutritive properties that can possibly be contained in any preparation." The " Lancet," London, July 13, 1878, says of Johnston's Fluid Beef:--" The peculiarity of this preparation is that the ordinary Extract is mixed with a portion of the muscular fibre in a state of such fine division that the microscope is required to identify it. It is unnecessary to say that the actual food value of the Beef Tea is greatly increased by this admixture, and the medical profession have now a Fluid Meat which is comparable in nutritive power to the solid. The new preparation is excellent in flavor, and we cannot doubt that it will be very extensively used." JOHNSTON'S FLUID BEEF, then, is essentially an Extract of Beef, prepared upon the most approved principles, but differing from all other Extracts or Essences or Beef Tea, inasmuch as it is in combina- tion with the actual Beef itself, and that in a form so assisting nature in the process of digestion that it is readily absorbed by the most hopeless dyspeptic or prostrate infant. Animal food offers a means of strength not furnished by any other article of diet, but from an enfeebled state of the digestive apparatus such nourishment has not hitherto been available to many who most require it. Digestion proper is the process by which food is chemically dissolved so that the nutritious elements which it con- = t —ft " tains may be absorbed by the system. With the lean of animal food this change is effected in the stomach by the action of the gastric juice, but when this juice is deficient in quality, or quantity, it is incapable of affecting the centre of the morsels of food presented to it, and they in this unprepared state leave the stomach, bearing with them the causes of dyspepsia and its train of concomitant evils. The theory of JOHNSTON'S FLUID BpEF has however solved the hitherto insurmountable difficulty, and furnishes all the desirable re- sults of meat diet to those who are otherwise unable to digest animal food. In its manufacture the albumen and fibrine (or rather the entire lean of beef) is by a special process dessicated and mechanically pulver- ised to such a minute degree of subdivision that it is almost impercept- ible in water.

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