The servants of the stomach / by Jean Macé.

  • Jean Macé
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The servants of the stomach / by Jean Macé. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and children to be accounted for, as the bones of the former, from being more solid, would naturally break far less easily ? It is accounted for by the manner in which the bones grow in the body, and the changes they undergo in pro¬ portion as age advances. You may often have seen meat-jelly, or, more properly speaking, bone-jelly, transparent and trembling upon a a dish. If you go to the cook whilst she is preparing it, you will see it is principally extracted from the bones of calves ; thus, what cooks call jelly, scientific men call gelatine, and as gelatine is drawn from the bones, it is apparently because it is contained in them. In so great a degree does bone contain this gelatine, that the latter forms its basis, and the earthy substance, phos¬ phate of lime, which by degrees hardens it into bone, is only, so to speak, a stranger who comes to lodge little by little within the flexible meshes of the gelatinous tissue. You will, perhaps, hardly believe, upon looking at a ham or mutton bone, that any soft substance is contained within the bone. We have, however, a very easy method of ascertaining this, which I will explain to you ; it will give you an idea of the way in which people set about discovering what is hidden within a variety of bodies. À naughty woman once upon a time gave her little girl a cup filled with powdered sugar and marble dust mixed together, telling her she should have nothing to eat until she had separated all the marble dust without losing a grain, and without leaving any sugar among it. Many children in her place would have been puzzled how to act, and would probably have gone supperless to bed ; but this little girl, who had plenty of common
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