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

  • Henry Letheby
Date:
1868
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

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.

    54/56 (page 52)
    24th Vict., cap. 84) of 1860 ; but as the act is only por- missivo, little or no offect has been given to it. Even in those places, as in the City of London, whore it has been put into operation, and public analysts liave been appointed, no good lias resulted from it; in fact, it stands upon the statute-book as a dead letter. Speaking for the City, I may say that every inducement has been offered for the effective working of tho act, but nothing has come of it. In olden time the remedies for such mis-' demeanours were quick and effectual. In the Assisa pants, for example, as set forth in Liber albits, there are not only the stiictest regulations concerning tho manner in which tho business of the baker is to be conducted, but there are also the penalties for failing in the same. If any defaxilt, it says, shall be found in the bread of a baker in the City, the first time let him be drawn upon a hurdle from the Guildhall to his own house through tho great streets where there be most people assembled, and through the great streets which are most dirty, with the faulty loaf hanging from his neck; if a second time he shall be found committing the same offence, let him be drawn from the GuildhaU through the great street of Cheepe, in manner aforesaid, to the piUory, and let him be put upon the pillory, and remain there at lea§t one hour in the day ; and the third time that such defatflt shall be found, he shall be drawn, and the oven shall be pulled down, and the baker made to forswear the trade within the City for ever. It fui'ther tells us that William de Stratford suffered this pimishment for selling bread of short weight, and John de Strode for makiri^ bread of filth and cobwebs. One hoary-headed offender was excused the hurdle on account of his age and the severity of the season; and it would seem that the last time the punishment was inflicted was in the sixteenth year of the reign of Henry VI., when Simon Frensshe was so drawn. A like pimishment was awarded to butchers and vintners for fraudulent dealings ; for we are told that a butcher was paiuded through the streets with his face to the horse's tail, for selUng measly bacon at market, and that the next day he was set in the pillory with two great pieces of his measly bacon over his head, and a writing which set forth his crimes. In the judg- ments recorded in Liber albiis there are twenty-three cases in which the pillory or the thew were awarded for selling putrid meat, fish, or poultry; thirteen for unlawful deal- ings of bakers, and six for the misdemeanours of vintners and wine-drawers. Of a verity we have degenerated in these matters. And now, in conclusion, having directed your attention to the nutritive values of different kinds of food; to their functional and dietetical powers ; to the modes in which they are associated; to the quantities required for ordinary labom-; to the manner in which thej'- are digested i to the effects of culinary and other ti-eatment-; to the way in which they may bo preserved ; and to the causes of their unwholesomeness, we may finally ask if any great generalisations can be deduced from our inquiries ? In the first place, you will, I think, have observed that there are very striking e\'idences of design in tho way in which organic matter is constantly kept in motion, for, whether living or dead, it is always in a state of molecular activity—either advancing towards the highest state of organisation, or retreating to thei confines of tho mineral kingdom. Tho result of thii^ is that, with a compai-ativcly Bm.aU amount of material, find with but little expenditure of force, the work of tho living world is fully and effectively performed. Starting from: tlie mineral kingdom, as carbonic acid, water and the transitions to thq s yet beyond the : we may say that e those of reduction ] acid and water loulded with nitrog 's are of an oppos by oxydation. ~ ammonia, the elements of organic nature pass through a succession of changes, first in tho vegetable and ne.\ ■ the animal, until they reach the summit of organizuu .n, when they again return to their primitive condition. In this manner a never-ending round of change is i - r- petuated, and the same material and the same fore kept moving in the same continuous circle. Through the efforts of the plant the crude materials are formed; into vegetable acids, sugar, gum, starch, fat, albumen^i and tissue; and then the animal converts them int<K higher forms of structure, as gelatine, muscle, and brain; the two extreme^, therefore, of these changes are, to us^ the words of Gerhai-dt, carbonic acid, water, and ammonia at one end; albun- n, gelatine, fat, a: cerebral matter at the other—V extremes arc countless, and aiy of science. Broadly, howc chemical functions oif the-p deoxydation, whereby ca ■ deprived of their oxygen , ' into food; whUc those < nature, for they destroy 1 plant, therefore, is the ma-j^uc or medium when carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, are converted new compounds, and light and heat are transfo: into chemical affinity ; and the animal is the medium machine whereby these compounds are destroyed, their afiinities changed into other manifestations force, and finally into heat. In this way, the circuil change is completed; and it is not difficult to trace phenomena of vitality to the cosmical forces which plant had imprisoned. But shall we ever be able follow, through all the intricacies of change, the coi less transitions of both matter and force in their pi from the mineral kingdom to the animal, and then bi to the mineral again ? It is easy to connect, by a co: lation of force, the muscular movements of the a; body, and even the highest efforts of the human mil with the sunbeam which the plant had arrested; shall we ever be permitted to unravel those mysterii functions, those intermediate changes which consti the phenomena of life ? Why is it., for example, and b comes it, that the living cell of the plant is able aggregate mineral matter in opposition to the com laws of affinity, and can transform light and heat cell-force ? How is it, too, that the animal, in rove: the process/and so restoring the play of affinity, is able' transmiite it into other manifestations of force ? present; the utmost we can say of it is. that orgai matter is the appointed medium of all these chsmges, is designed for the exliibition of vital phenomena, j as mineral matter is the appointed medium for phenomena of electricity and magnetism; and yet some extent, perhaps, we arc able to pencti-ato mystery ; for by finding tho clue to the peculiar acl of the vegetable in reducing chemical compounds, can, by operating on such substances as carbonic ai water, and ammonia, produce a large number of orga principles ; in fact, of the three great classes of alimi tary substances, to which I have so frequently di your attention—namely, tho oleaginous, tho saccha and tho albuminous—it may be said that^tho already within the manufacturing power of the ch and the second is nearly within it; .«o that the abundant proof that tho agency of a vital force is necessary to the .formation of organic compounds; there is even hojic that the fabrication of food may bo altogether b%ond the capabilities of man. LONDON : Vr. TllOUNCE, PUINTEK, CUKSITOR-STREET, CHANGBKT-LANE.