Aërated bread : the new system of bread manufacture.

Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Aërated bread : the new system of bread manufacture. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    3rd. Less meat is necessary, a greater quantity of bread being eaten. 4th. Dyspeptics who have been unable to eat any breakfast for years, can now eat a hearty meal of the aerated bread. 5th. Individuals accustomed to complain of u sinking,” and a craving for food every two or three hours, find great relief by cor- fining themselves to the aerated bread ; in some instances I have found it specific. 6th. Individuals who suffer with acidity, heartburn, and flatulence after meals, and who seek relief by taking soda, magnesia, ginger, &c., are relieved by discontinuing beer and fermented bread, and taking the aerated bread. 7th. I have found it useful in many forms of disease, of which I shall speak further on. The reasons for this superiority may be thus explained :—The con¬ stituents of the fermented bread have been altered ; a large portion of its gluten has been deteriorated, or, according to Liebig, rendered soluble ; a small portion has been destroyed by the development of the yeast during fermentation ; and although these changes do not decrease the weight of the mass of bread, yet, from the deterioration and destruction of the gluten, it is less nutritious. Chemists tell us that the amount of nitrogen is not less in fermented bread than in flour ; this is true, but then much of the nitrogen in the bread is found in the yeast itself, which has been abstracted from the gluten during fermen¬ tation. Some of the starch also is converted into carbonic acid gas, a loss to the nutritive quality of the bread. Doubtless the changes produced by fermentation in the flour resemble somewhat the changes produced by the saliva and the gastric juice in the stomach ; but then the beautiful harmony, or correlation, so to speak, of the functions of digestion are interferred with, and render insalivation and the gastric secretions non-essential ; and, as has been proved by Paget, every secretion being an excretion, so much foreign matter in the economy not being eliminated, must prove prejudical, and tend to derange the health. The results of the changes effected in the flour by fermentation will be that the chyme is more rapidly formed, and possesses the acids in excess, as in the analyses of fermented bread small quantities of acetates and lactates are discovered, caused by fermentation : then it will be more rapidly hurried out of the stomach, before the absorption of some of its constituents has taken place. Nitrogen gas is fre¬ quently given off in large quantities, causing the most painful form of flatulence ; biliary derangements follow, with all that fearful train of symptoms accompanying them. We may thus perceive that, in the strong and healthy, much nervous energy is required to counteract these abnormal changes; and although it is done so that the individual feels no ill-effects at the time, still he is laying up for himself, on some future day, a trouble which will tell upon him when he is debilitated by disease or weakened by exposure. To the weak and delicate,