A manual of practical hygiene for students, physicians, and health officers / By Charles Harrington.

  • Harrington, Charles, 1856-1908.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of practical hygiene for students, physicians, and health officers / By Charles Harrington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    Pirl» reports that in Saxony during 1894, 295; in 1895, 388; in 1896, 399 ; and in 1897, 474 dogs were slaughtered and inspected. In Dessau, between 1893 and 1898, the number averaged 251 yearly, and inspection showed that one in 202 was trichinous. According to Tempel,^ of 289 killed at Chemnitz during 1897, 1.391 per cent., and of 147 killed during the iirst half of the year 1898, 2.04 per cent, were found to be trichinous. The meat is eaten chiefly in the roasted state, but also, in many parts of Saxony, raw, but highly sea- soned. The same animals are commonly eaten by the Chinese, and the Canada lynx and the skunk are rated as delicacies by the North Ameri- can Indians. MEATS. The value of meat as food depends upon the presence of proteids, fat, and mineral salts. The nitrogenous extractive matters (creatin, etc.), sometimes called meat bases, formed by cleavage of the pro- teids, give flavor, but have little value as foods. The carbohydrates play but an insignificant part, being present cliiefly as muscle sugar and to only a veiy small extent. All meat, however lean, contains fat, some of which is visible and some indistinguishable from the muscle fibres by which it is surrounded. The visible fat varies widely in amount. Very fat beef may contain considerably more than a quarter of its weight of visible fat, and fat 2:)ork meat more than a half, while chicken and veal contain comparatively little. The content of water varies very widely and in general may be said to be governed by the richness in fat, for, while the proteids are fairly constant in amount, the remainder is almost wholly water and fat, and the greater the amount of the one, the less the amount of the other. The less fat a meat contains, the less, therefore, its relative nutritive value. Digestibility.—While the amount of nutriment contained in meats chiefly determines their food value, the latter is to no inconsiderable extent dependent upon the ability of the alimentary tract to digest and al)Sorb thorn. Gastric digestion is by no means to be accepted as a measure of the true digestibility of a food, and the same is true of the results of artificial laboratory experiments ; hence many of the accepted sttitements bearing on this subject, based upon the oft-quoted experi- ments on Alexis St. Martin and u])on test-tube observations, may be wholly disregarded. liaw meat is digested more easily, l)ut less completely, than that which has iindergrme the process of cooking, and roasted meat is more completelv digested than that which lias been i)oiled. Fat meats, as lif<'(' and mutton, and esj)ccially pork, require more time for digestion than those which, like cliicken and veal, contain but little fat. In general, it may be said that meats are assimilMted more easily than vcgc- tiibie i'otxU. Flavor.—'I'he flavor of meiits de[)ends largely iij)on the nature and ' Z<-il.wlirif( fiir FIi-i«'li- iinri Milchhygiciie, X., No. 1. 'Ibi.lom, IX., .No. I.