Foods / by Edward Smith.

  • Edward Smith
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Foods / by Edward Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    the flesh, and as it varies in different classes of creatures, it is popularly subdivided into flesh, fish, and fowl, whilst the latter are milk, eggs, and other products. Those who profess to be vegetarians eat the latter only. It is also divided into lean and fat, both of which abound in animals generally, and this leads to a yet more tech- nical division, viz., into nitrogenous and non-nitro- genous foods, since all lean flesh contains nitrogen, whilst ^11 fats when pure are destitute of it. Hence, however differing in appearance, all kinds of flesh have certain nutritive qualities in common; but the proportion in which the qualities exist varies, and •each large division of the class has its own nutritive value. The anatomical composition of flesh is very similar in every kind of creature, whether it be the muscle of the ox or of the fly; that is to say, there are certain tubes which are filled with minute parts or elements, and the adhesion of the tubes together makes up the ^substance of the flesh. This may be represented grossly hj imagining the finger of a glove, to be called the -sarcolemna, and so small as not to be apparent to the naked eye, but filled with nuclei and the juices peculiar to •each animal. Hundreds of such fingers attached together would represent a bundle of muscular fibres. The ijubes are of fine tissue, but are tolerably ]3ermanent; whilst the contents are in direct communication ^ith the circulating blood and pursue an incessant course of chemical change and physical renewal. The quality of meat consists in the character of the pulp or enclosed substance, whilst the toughness depends chiefly upon the tubes and the structures which bind them and other parts together, and both vary with the age and breeding of the animal. The aim in modern breed- ing is to produce the greatest amount of muscle and
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