On food : four Cantor lectures, delivered before the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce / by H. Letheby.

Henry Letheby

Date:: 1868

Credit: On food : four Cantor lectures, delivered before the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce / by H. Letheby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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$I have snid nothing of the improper practice of killing very young anim.ils, especially calves, for food, before the tissues have had time to change from their uterine con- dition. On the Continent it is unlawful to kill or to sell c alves for food, that are not more than fourteen days old, but in tliis country there is no such resti-iction, and it is a common practice to dispose of the carcasses of newly- born, or even fcxjtal calves to the sausage-maker; and as the flesh is sodden and insipid, he strengthens it with j old, tough, and sinewy flesh. It has the advantage, I moreover, of being miscible with any description of meat, 1 and of taking any variety of flavour; in fact, it makes just that kind of sausage which is susceptible of any kind of flavour, and where, to use the expression of Dickens, It's the seasonen as does it. I cannot say that such meat is positively unwholesome, hut it is nasty, and excites the same sort of disgust as an egg with a chick in it. . As regards vegetable foods, they are not so liable to ' decay or even to parasitic infection, as animal foods ; for the acori or mites of flour and sugar, or even the ivecveh of biscuit are harmless ; indeed, the most important infec- tion of grain is the fungoid disease of it, called ergot. This is the muttercorn or rocjgemnutter of the Germans, ^ and as it chiefly infests the rye, it is named, from its - appearance, spurred rye ; but it also attacks barley, oats, wheat, maize, rice, and most of the grasses. It always appears as a black grain, of a larger size than usual, and it is mostly found in plants which grow upon moist clay soils, in damp situations, especially in the neighbourhood of forests. The district of Sologne, in France, between the rivers Loire and Cher, was once notoriously infested with the disease, and the Abbe Pessier, who was deputed in 1777 to investigate the causes of the extraordinary prevalence of ergot in that district, attributed it to the poorness and wetness of the land, and to the dampness of the air from the numerous forests. In bad seasons, as much as a third or a fourth of the crop was infected with ergot, and even in good seasons it constituted about two per cent of it. The disease in the grain is due to the growth of a peculiar fungus, which the late Mr. Queckett named ergotctia abortifaciens ; and the effects of it on the human body are very serious. It acts chiefly on the nervous system, causing giddiness, dimness of sight, loss of feeling, and twitchiag of the limbs, and death by convulsions ; or it produces a creep- ing sensation over the surface of the body, with cold- ness of the extremities, followed by insensibility and gangrene. These effects are no doubt referred to by Ligebert in his History of Gaul and France, when he says that the, year 1089 was a pestUent year, especially in the western parts of Lorraine, for many persons became putrid in consequence of their inward parts bekig consumed by St. Anthony's fire. Their limbs were rotten, and became black like coal, and they either perished miserably, or, being deprived of their putrid hands and feet, were reserved for a more miserable life. Baylo, too, in his account of this sick- ness, says that the bread was of a deep violet colour. The like effects have been observed in other parts of the Continent, as in Silesia, Prussia, Bohemia, Saxony, Holstein, Denmark, Switzerland, Lombardy, and Swe- den, where the creeping sickness, as it is called, has attacked whole districts of the country, sparing neither old nor young, rich nor poor. The remedy for the disease is in the hands of the miller, who should separate the crgotised from the healthy grains. Fortunately we have a ready test for its presence, not merely in the miscropic appearances of the flour, but in the circumstance that as it is the lightest of aU the constituents of flour, it will float upon a mix- ture of one part of chloroform and six of alcohol, and will appear as a scum of dark-brown particles. Another source of danger is the presence of poisonous grasses in the flour. The most important of these is darnel {lolium tcmulciitttm), which the careless or slovenlj- farmer will sometimes permit to oveiTun his fields, and the seeds becoming mixed with the com, arc ground into ' flour by the equally careleas miller. The effect of t) grains on man is to cause a species of intoxication, wi- headache, giddiness, somnolency, delirium, convulsioi paralysis, and even death. Occasionally it excit. vomiting, with iiTitation of the alimentary canal, an then its effects are not so serious. Llany instanftes ai recorded of the poisonous action of the flour. Christis'ji for example, tolls us, that a few years ago almost all th inmates of the poor-house at Shefiield, to the number ' 80, were attacked with analogous symptoms, after break- fastmg on oatmeal porridge, and it was supposed th the effects were caused by the presence of darnel in t oatmeal. A similar accident is mentioned by Perleb, having occurred at the House of Correction at Freybui and still more recently the same effects were produced] 74 persons at the workhouae of Beninghausen. Taylor states, on the authority of Dr. ICingsley, Eoscrea, that in the month of January, 1854, sevei families, including about 30 persons, suffered severeiyl from the effects of bread containing the flour of darnel f seeds. Those who partook of the bread staggered about j as if they were intoxicated, and although they aU re- covered, yet they experienced a good deal of distrc- from giddiness, coldness of the limbs, and great pros- \ tration of vital power. 1 Unripe grain, as well as grain affected with the ru%t. • and mouldy flour and mouldy bread, have also produce . distui'bance of the human system. M. Bovier attributf the epidemic of dysentery, which occurred in the depar. ment of the Oise, in the autumn of 1793, to the use > unripe grain ; and com affected with brown or black rv- is thought bj' many to be unwholesome. Mouldy _/?«/. or mouldy bread is certainly injurious, for several in- stances are on record where not only men, but horses, i have been poisoned by mouldy bread; and M. Payen f has given a graphic account of the distressing effects r i the moTildy ammunition bread supplied to the troop who were encamped near Paris, in 1843 ; the mould on.|- that occasion was a yellow fungus, the oidium aiiran-1 iiacum, but at other times ia has been of a green colour frompcitnicillum glaucum. Mouldy food of every description is dangerous to uS' and considering to what an extent the siiores or sporidu of poisonous fungi are floating in the atmosphere, it iii- surprising that they do not more frequently taint out > food and cause disorder of the system, for air washi with distUled water wiU always yield abundance i these germs, which are ready at any moment to sprint into activity when they come into contact with a prop< nidus for their growth. A remedy for these hidden sources of danger is good and effective cooking. And now, in conclusion, let me make a few ri on the subject of the fraudulent sop/iisiications of i subject which has been very popular for the la>; years, or rather, I should say, since the year 1820, Mr. Frederick Accum published his treatise on tcrations of Food, and Culinary Poisons, with tht^ ling motto from the Book of Kings— There is dt the pot. As you may easily imagine, such a ten announcement by a well-known writer, could not excite alarm in the public mind, and to provoke a curiosity. The book, therefore was eagcrlj' sought and a thousand copies of it were sold within a month p its publication; so that, to use the words of the author in his advertisement to the second edition— tlicr suflicicnt inducement to reprint thework. The siii-. success of Accum's xmderfciking has been such a temn tion to others, that the press has literallj- groaned the cflbrts of sensational writers on this subject, although I am ready to admit the importance of it,; am bound to state that it has often been grossly ea gerated, especially by those who have had but practical knowledge to guide them. The objects of fraudulent adulterations of food ai»* three-fold:— 1. To increase the bulk or weight of the article. 2. To improve its appearance. 3. To give it a false strength. 1\ ' Adul$