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EXTRACTS OF MEAT AND SIMILAR PREPARATIONS.
EXTRACTS OF MEAT AND SIMILAR PREPARATIONS.
1541
of inspection of the water-supply. In the State of Minnesota full copy. The question is one of public interest and is not it is now the rule not to analyse samples of, water forwarded easy of solution. It is of importance that the registration to the laboratory but to send out inspectors who, after an of deaths should provide absolutely trustworthy materials for " accurate survey, may then proceed to make field plates the compilation of statistics and for the information of those from the water on the spot. These, plates are sent to the concerned with the public health. There are, however, imlaboratory for incubation and examination. Thus Minnesota portant uses for which the production of a full and accurate places inspection first and, if necessary, then begins a death certificate may be required, and if such a document bacteriological examination on the spot. The system may facilitates the operations of life assurance companies it seem expensive but, as Professor Connell observes, one assists in a class of business of great public importance. epidemic of enteric fever prevented would save the expense The objects of such companies may be purely commercial so far as the relations of assurer and assured are concerned, of many years. but nevertheless the legislature would probably hesitate to THE LOCAL USE OF EPSOM SALTS IN THE enact anything which tended to hamper life assurance or to PRIMARY DRESSING OF BURNS AND render it either more expensive or less secure. The medical SCALDS. man, from his point of view, rightly regards himself as the IN the October number of the Inter7tational Journal] of trustee of his patient’s secret, although equally he appreSurgery is published a paper by Dr. M. N. Stowe of Jesup, ciates the valueless nature of death statistics without Georgia, on the local use of magnesium sulphate as a first accurate certification. The public, from their point of view, dressing for burns and scalds. The paper was read at the may also be justified in thinking that the dead are past thirteenth annual meeting of the Association of Surgeons of being affected by the revelation of the cause of their the Southern Railway at Birmingham, Alabama. He recom- decease, and that the interests of the living, on the whole, mends the employment of magnesium sulphate because it would be best served by a candid statement, open to gives instant relief and the inflammatory reaction is much inspection upon proof that such inspection would tend to reduced, while there is no risk of poisonous effects from further justice or to prevent injustice. The difficulty, no absorption. Epsom salts are nearly always available doubt, lies in the imposition of satisfactory conditions under and the dressing is very inexpensive, and it is also which the full contents of the death certificate should be easily removed. In many cases no further dressing made known and in the fact that the candour of the medical is required, but even when it is thought desirable to employ is likely to be proportionate in many cases to the any other form of dressing later the magnesium sulphate is of those conditions. If, however, in certifying he valuable as a primary dressing. Dr. Stowe uses the salts as earns a fee payable from the State he becomes even more follows : Where the burnt part can be immersed a saturated conspicuously than now a State officer, bound as such to solution of the salts should be used and the part should be perform a public duty without fear or favour. kept in it until no pain is felt on withdrawal. We may mention that water at 62° F. dissolves more than its own EXTRACTS OF MEAT AND SIMILAR PREPARATIONS. weight of magnesium sulphate. If it is not convenient to use a solution, the dry salts may be applied and covered with A BULLETIN has just been issuedgiving the results of a, a wet cloth ; or a thick paste may be made and placed on chemical study of various commercial products made from ’the affected part, such as the eyes or nose. The method is meat and of various adulterants of meat extracts. The insimple and it appears to be worthy of trial. vestigation was initiated with a view of establishing standards for these preparations, many of which are widely advertised THE POSSIBILITY OF INTRODUCING SECRECY and highly recommended for invalids as concentrated nutriIN THE CERTIFICATION AND REGISTRATION tious foods. The brands examined included almost all the solid OF DEATHS. and fluid extracts of meat that are well known in the United Dr. E. M. Smith, medical officer of health of the city of Kingdom. It is interesting to note that American extracts York, read a paper at the recent Congress held by the Royal of meat are now extensively prepared by the evaporation of Sanitary Institute at Cardiff on the subject of death certifi- the soup liquor obtained from meat which has been parboiled cation and registration. Among other matters discussed in in the process of preparing canned meat. A first-grade connexion with this important subject prominence was given extract of beef is prepared from beef alone, but inferior both in the paper and in the speeches which followed to the grades are obtained from the trimmings, including odds desirability of obtaining a fuller and more accurate state- and ends of meat, muscle tissue and bone, or from ment of the cause of death than the medical attendant now the liquor in which corned beef has been cooked. gives in some cases and to the possible conditions which In the latter case considerable quantities of nitrates would conduce to this end. It is hardly to be denied that and sodium chloride are present in the extract. The the cause of death under the existing law is at times dis- manufacturers claim that 100 pounds of soup liquor will guised to some extent owing to a desire not to hurt the yield one pound of meat extract. The products examined feelings of surviving relatives, or in order not to gratify their were divided into four classes-viz., solid and fluid curiosity as to the private history of the deceased. Sur- extracts, meat juices, and miscellaneous preparationsvivors may also sometimes desire reticence as to material and were judged by empirical standards. In the case of matters in order not to afford evidence to insurance com- solid extracts the standard required not less than 75 per panies likely to be injurious to the estate of the deceased. cent. of total solids, containing not more than 27 per cent. Deaths due to alcoholism and to syphilis were given as of ash, and not more than 12 per cent. of sodium chloride, instances of those not now accurately registered for reasons or six-tenths per cent. of fat. It was also held that the such as the e suggested, and the recommendations made in nitrogenous compounds should contain not less than 40 per view of these circumstances were to the effect that medical cent. of meat bases and not less than 10 per cent. of kreatin practitioners should be paid by the State for death certi- and kreatinin. Of the six solid extracts examined several fication, that the certificates should be sent to registrars fell below the definition in one or two points but they were under cover, and that to asking for copies satisfactory in most respects, the percentage of nitrogen of the certificate or to assurance companies a modified 1 Bulletin No. 114, Bureau of Chemistry, United States Department statement of the cause of death should be given and not a of Agriculture, by W. D. Bigelow and F. C. Cook, pp. 56 (1908). -
man
stringency
1542
INEBRIATES’ HOMES.—THE POPE AS
In the case of the fluid extracts of should from 50 to 75 per cent. of solids, which contain meat, several fell below the minimum figure. Some of these products cost more than a solid extract of meat, although they contain much more water. None of the samples of meat juice examined contained any appreciable amount of coagulable protein which should be present to the extent of not less than 35 per cent. of the nitrogenous bodies. It is possible to prepare a fresh meat juice by heating the meat to a temperature not exceeding 60° C. and - expressing the juice. Samples prepared in this way in the laboratory contained practically one-half the nitrogenous bodies in a coagulable form, and in several cases a considerably larger proportion of the nitrogenous bodies were coagulable. The report includes a valuable discussion of the methods of analysis of meat products and a p’l’éeis of published work on the nutritive values of gelatin and meat extracts and juices.
being sufficiently high.
A
"(GOOD SAMARITAN"
and she had In such cases
probably
been convicted at least
detention
200 times.
the best permanent It and ’their families. for women themselves the thing would be useless to send these cases to Langho unless they could be kept there for the term of their natural lives. Only last week a man was sent to prison for four months with hard labour for persistent neglect of his seven children and, it may also be said, of his wife. The children were ill-fed, badly clothed, dirty, of course, and the rooms they lived inreeked with filth.’ His wife was too ill to be removed, but the children were taken to the workhouse and put under medical treatment. Since Oct. 10th the family had had parish relief. Under these conditions it might have been thought that the opportunities for getting drunk would not be numerous, but on the 31st he contrived to get arrested for being drunk and fighting, and he was known to have been a drunkard for nine or ten years. Whether such a man is wilfully or involuntarily a drunkard he is a pest to society. What ought to be done with him ? INEBRIATES’ HOMES. The injury he does to the State by being the father ofOUR Manchester correspondent writes :’’ Much regret almost certainly-decadent children, injured still further by ill-treatment, ought to be prevented. But how ? The solu,was felt by those interested in the reformation of drunkards tion that seems most promising to many is detention in a and issued the by discouraging report recently disappointing labour of the Inebriates’ Home. There the committee colony, where at least his keep ought to be earned, Langho by either or till there is good evidence of rewere if all efforts of as was a note, too, permanently, useless, hopelessness, " formation. and the others. ,in the discussion at the meeting by justices The cures are reported to be no more than 20 per cent. THE POPE AS A "GOOD SAMARITAN." Several letters on the question have appeared in the local THE "sacerdotal jubilee " of Pius X. has brought to the papers; one from the lady in charge of a private home in Manchester, who takes a more hopeful view, giving two ’out Vatican not only deputations and pilgrimages innumerable, . of many instances that could be cited’ where women ’sodden charged with words of congratulation on the anniversary, but with drink’ have recovered their self-control. In one case also messages, similarly inspired, by post and telegraph the woman earned her own living for years, and in the other, hardly less gratifying to the august Pontiff. Among these after being in the home from January, 1897, to March, latter there is one which contains an incident thought worthy 1898, returned home and ’has since acted the part of of a place in the IVox Urbis, " a monthly organ of the Vatican, a true mother to her children whom formerly she neglected written and published in the language of St. Augustine, or, entirely.’ This woman had been a habitual drunkard, the flow of its Latinity considered, of St. Jerome. The incispending a large part of her time in public-houses. Perhaps dent referred to must have relieved, in the Pope’s mind, there is too great a tendency to take for granted that if a the monotony of the addresses and congratulatory letters, woman once gives way to drink she cannot be reclaimed, and dealing as it does with the past, on which he has every right so far as her family or society is concerned, is irretrievably to dwell with satisfaction, and not on the present or the ’lost. The honorary secretary of the Women’s Union, Church future, replete with the difficulties and dangers inseparable of England Temperance Society, on the part of her com- from "the head that wears a crown,"still more from that mittee, regrets the statements as to the impossibility of the which is pressed by a tiara. "Pius X. et Miles Austriacus," ,reform of women inebriates deduced from the experience of such is the title of the narrative to which the "Vox Urbis" -the Government inebriates’ reformatory at Langho. Rescue draws the attention of its readers, and the tenor of which and preventive work have been carried on in the Manchester is as follows. In 1865, when the Venetian province diocese for seven years, and instances can be cited where was still a part of Austria, a soldier of the line, women drunkards have given up drinking and stood firm for Johann Baier by name, during the autumn manoeuvres, five or six years. She believes that one great cause of the collapsed, footsore and weary, from his exertions, and failure of the Government homes in the work of reform is that was found lying in a ditch on the marching-route ’ Under the existing law near the village of Tombolo. the cases are taken there too late. His condition was de’nearly all the women have so irreparably injured their brains plorable ; heart failure seemed imminent, when there through long-continued drinking that only life detention can happened to pass by the priest of the parish, who gave him be of any use.’ As long as this is the case early treatment all the first aid " that the"sagacité de caeur" " could devise, cannot be adopted, and the course advocated by another :efreshed him with food and drink and supplied him with writer cannot be carried out-viz., that ’the care of the ;he "sacro numismate,"something more than the "twoperson who has begun to give way to habits of intemperance pence " (&dgr;vo òrwápta) given by a similar benefactor on a should be firmly taken in hand at the outset.’ Another dmilar occasion. That priest-a ..Good Samaritan " for the difficulty is the want of supervision and sympathetic ionce-was Giuseppe Sarto, now in the Chair of St. Peter. guidance when these poor feeble-willed people emerge Next year the same soldier, serving in the Austrian lines on The force of habit, and perhaps i be fatal field of Sadowa, was severely wounded, and- therefrom gaol or home. the acute return of the craving for drink, may undot after lived as a pensioner in his Silesian home, the village in a moment any good that detention has seemed to ( of Litschen, where he kept a tobacconist’s shop. Forty effect ; for the poor victim of this besetment may turn ’ears had elapsed when, reading a biographical sketch into the public-house, and unless she is on the black list can ( of Pius X., he thought that the Pontiff could be no other be at once served with drink. A woman from Rochdale, it t han the parish priest of Tombolo who had relieved him in is stated, was recently committed at Bacup for a month. 1 is distress. Accordingly, he addressed the Holy Father in The chief constable said it was her 181st known conviction s modest letter, recalling the incident and asking if he were as
these,
___
,
seems
1541
of inspection of the water-supply. In the State of Minnesota full copy. The question is one of public interest and is not it is now the rule not to analyse samples of, water forwarded easy of solution. It is of importance that the registration to the laboratory but to send out inspectors who, after an of deaths should provide absolutely trustworthy materials for " accurate survey, may then proceed to make field plates the compilation of statistics and for the information of those from the water on the spot. These, plates are sent to the concerned with the public health. There are, however, imlaboratory for incubation and examination. Thus Minnesota portant uses for which the production of a full and accurate places inspection first and, if necessary, then begins a death certificate may be required, and if such a document bacteriological examination on the spot. The system may facilitates the operations of life assurance companies it seem expensive but, as Professor Connell observes, one assists in a class of business of great public importance. epidemic of enteric fever prevented would save the expense The objects of such companies may be purely commercial so far as the relations of assurer and assured are concerned, of many years. but nevertheless the legislature would probably hesitate to THE LOCAL USE OF EPSOM SALTS IN THE enact anything which tended to hamper life assurance or to PRIMARY DRESSING OF BURNS AND render it either more expensive or less secure. The medical SCALDS. man, from his point of view, rightly regards himself as the IN the October number of the Inter7tational Journal] of trustee of his patient’s secret, although equally he appreSurgery is published a paper by Dr. M. N. Stowe of Jesup, ciates the valueless nature of death statistics without Georgia, on the local use of magnesium sulphate as a first accurate certification. The public, from their point of view, dressing for burns and scalds. The paper was read at the may also be justified in thinking that the dead are past thirteenth annual meeting of the Association of Surgeons of being affected by the revelation of the cause of their the Southern Railway at Birmingham, Alabama. He recom- decease, and that the interests of the living, on the whole, mends the employment of magnesium sulphate because it would be best served by a candid statement, open to gives instant relief and the inflammatory reaction is much inspection upon proof that such inspection would tend to reduced, while there is no risk of poisonous effects from further justice or to prevent injustice. The difficulty, no absorption. Epsom salts are nearly always available doubt, lies in the imposition of satisfactory conditions under and the dressing is very inexpensive, and it is also which the full contents of the death certificate should be easily removed. In many cases no further dressing made known and in the fact that the candour of the medical is required, but even when it is thought desirable to employ is likely to be proportionate in many cases to the any other form of dressing later the magnesium sulphate is of those conditions. If, however, in certifying he valuable as a primary dressing. Dr. Stowe uses the salts as earns a fee payable from the State he becomes even more follows : Where the burnt part can be immersed a saturated conspicuously than now a State officer, bound as such to solution of the salts should be used and the part should be perform a public duty without fear or favour. kept in it until no pain is felt on withdrawal. We may mention that water at 62° F. dissolves more than its own EXTRACTS OF MEAT AND SIMILAR PREPARATIONS. weight of magnesium sulphate. If it is not convenient to use a solution, the dry salts may be applied and covered with A BULLETIN has just been issuedgiving the results of a, a wet cloth ; or a thick paste may be made and placed on chemical study of various commercial products made from ’the affected part, such as the eyes or nose. The method is meat and of various adulterants of meat extracts. The insimple and it appears to be worthy of trial. vestigation was initiated with a view of establishing standards for these preparations, many of which are widely advertised THE POSSIBILITY OF INTRODUCING SECRECY and highly recommended for invalids as concentrated nutriIN THE CERTIFICATION AND REGISTRATION tious foods. The brands examined included almost all the solid OF DEATHS. and fluid extracts of meat that are well known in the United Dr. E. M. Smith, medical officer of health of the city of Kingdom. It is interesting to note that American extracts York, read a paper at the recent Congress held by the Royal of meat are now extensively prepared by the evaporation of Sanitary Institute at Cardiff on the subject of death certifi- the soup liquor obtained from meat which has been parboiled cation and registration. Among other matters discussed in in the process of preparing canned meat. A first-grade connexion with this important subject prominence was given extract of beef is prepared from beef alone, but inferior both in the paper and in the speeches which followed to the grades are obtained from the trimmings, including odds desirability of obtaining a fuller and more accurate state- and ends of meat, muscle tissue and bone, or from ment of the cause of death than the medical attendant now the liquor in which corned beef has been cooked. gives in some cases and to the possible conditions which In the latter case considerable quantities of nitrates would conduce to this end. It is hardly to be denied that and sodium chloride are present in the extract. The the cause of death under the existing law is at times dis- manufacturers claim that 100 pounds of soup liquor will guised to some extent owing to a desire not to hurt the yield one pound of meat extract. The products examined feelings of surviving relatives, or in order not to gratify their were divided into four classes-viz., solid and fluid curiosity as to the private history of the deceased. Sur- extracts, meat juices, and miscellaneous preparationsvivors may also sometimes desire reticence as to material and were judged by empirical standards. In the case of matters in order not to afford evidence to insurance com- solid extracts the standard required not less than 75 per panies likely to be injurious to the estate of the deceased. cent. of total solids, containing not more than 27 per cent. Deaths due to alcoholism and to syphilis were given as of ash, and not more than 12 per cent. of sodium chloride, instances of those not now accurately registered for reasons or six-tenths per cent. of fat. It was also held that the such as the e suggested, and the recommendations made in nitrogenous compounds should contain not less than 40 per view of these circumstances were to the effect that medical cent. of meat bases and not less than 10 per cent. of kreatin practitioners should be paid by the State for death certi- and kreatinin. Of the six solid extracts examined several fication, that the certificates should be sent to registrars fell below the definition in one or two points but they were under cover, and that to asking for copies satisfactory in most respects, the percentage of nitrogen of the certificate or to assurance companies a modified 1 Bulletin No. 114, Bureau of Chemistry, United States Department statement of the cause of death should be given and not a of Agriculture, by W. D. Bigelow and F. C. Cook, pp. 56 (1908). -
man
stringency
1542
INEBRIATES’ HOMES.—THE POPE AS
In the case of the fluid extracts of should from 50 to 75 per cent. of solids, which contain meat, several fell below the minimum figure. Some of these products cost more than a solid extract of meat, although they contain much more water. None of the samples of meat juice examined contained any appreciable amount of coagulable protein which should be present to the extent of not less than 35 per cent. of the nitrogenous bodies. It is possible to prepare a fresh meat juice by heating the meat to a temperature not exceeding 60° C. and - expressing the juice. Samples prepared in this way in the laboratory contained practically one-half the nitrogenous bodies in a coagulable form, and in several cases a considerably larger proportion of the nitrogenous bodies were coagulable. The report includes a valuable discussion of the methods of analysis of meat products and a p’l’éeis of published work on the nutritive values of gelatin and meat extracts and juices.
being sufficiently high.
A
"(GOOD SAMARITAN"
and she had In such cases
probably
been convicted at least
detention
200 times.
the best permanent It and ’their families. for women themselves the thing would be useless to send these cases to Langho unless they could be kept there for the term of their natural lives. Only last week a man was sent to prison for four months with hard labour for persistent neglect of his seven children and, it may also be said, of his wife. The children were ill-fed, badly clothed, dirty, of course, and the rooms they lived inreeked with filth.’ His wife was too ill to be removed, but the children were taken to the workhouse and put under medical treatment. Since Oct. 10th the family had had parish relief. Under these conditions it might have been thought that the opportunities for getting drunk would not be numerous, but on the 31st he contrived to get arrested for being drunk and fighting, and he was known to have been a drunkard for nine or ten years. Whether such a man is wilfully or involuntarily a drunkard he is a pest to society. What ought to be done with him ? INEBRIATES’ HOMES. The injury he does to the State by being the father ofOUR Manchester correspondent writes :’’ Much regret almost certainly-decadent children, injured still further by ill-treatment, ought to be prevented. But how ? The solu,was felt by those interested in the reformation of drunkards tion that seems most promising to many is detention in a and issued the by discouraging report recently disappointing labour of the Inebriates’ Home. There the committee colony, where at least his keep ought to be earned, Langho by either or till there is good evidence of rewere if all efforts of as was a note, too, permanently, useless, hopelessness, " formation. and the others. ,in the discussion at the meeting by justices The cures are reported to be no more than 20 per cent. THE POPE AS A "GOOD SAMARITAN." Several letters on the question have appeared in the local THE "sacerdotal jubilee " of Pius X. has brought to the papers; one from the lady in charge of a private home in Manchester, who takes a more hopeful view, giving two ’out Vatican not only deputations and pilgrimages innumerable, . of many instances that could be cited’ where women ’sodden charged with words of congratulation on the anniversary, but with drink’ have recovered their self-control. In one case also messages, similarly inspired, by post and telegraph the woman earned her own living for years, and in the other, hardly less gratifying to the august Pontiff. Among these after being in the home from January, 1897, to March, latter there is one which contains an incident thought worthy 1898, returned home and ’has since acted the part of of a place in the IVox Urbis, " a monthly organ of the Vatican, a true mother to her children whom formerly she neglected written and published in the language of St. Augustine, or, entirely.’ This woman had been a habitual drunkard, the flow of its Latinity considered, of St. Jerome. The incispending a large part of her time in public-houses. Perhaps dent referred to must have relieved, in the Pope’s mind, there is too great a tendency to take for granted that if a the monotony of the addresses and congratulatory letters, woman once gives way to drink she cannot be reclaimed, and dealing as it does with the past, on which he has every right so far as her family or society is concerned, is irretrievably to dwell with satisfaction, and not on the present or the ’lost. The honorary secretary of the Women’s Union, Church future, replete with the difficulties and dangers inseparable of England Temperance Society, on the part of her com- from "the head that wears a crown,"still more from that mittee, regrets the statements as to the impossibility of the which is pressed by a tiara. "Pius X. et Miles Austriacus," ,reform of women inebriates deduced from the experience of such is the title of the narrative to which the "Vox Urbis" -the Government inebriates’ reformatory at Langho. Rescue draws the attention of its readers, and the tenor of which and preventive work have been carried on in the Manchester is as follows. In 1865, when the Venetian province diocese for seven years, and instances can be cited where was still a part of Austria, a soldier of the line, women drunkards have given up drinking and stood firm for Johann Baier by name, during the autumn manoeuvres, five or six years. She believes that one great cause of the collapsed, footsore and weary, from his exertions, and failure of the Government homes in the work of reform is that was found lying in a ditch on the marching-route ’ Under the existing law near the village of Tombolo. the cases are taken there too late. His condition was de’nearly all the women have so irreparably injured their brains plorable ; heart failure seemed imminent, when there through long-continued drinking that only life detention can happened to pass by the priest of the parish, who gave him be of any use.’ As long as this is the case early treatment all the first aid " that the"sagacité de caeur" " could devise, cannot be adopted, and the course advocated by another :efreshed him with food and drink and supplied him with writer cannot be carried out-viz., that ’the care of the ;he "sacro numismate,"something more than the "twoperson who has begun to give way to habits of intemperance pence " (&dgr;vo òrwápta) given by a similar benefactor on a should be firmly taken in hand at the outset.’ Another dmilar occasion. That priest-a ..Good Samaritan " for the difficulty is the want of supervision and sympathetic ionce-was Giuseppe Sarto, now in the Chair of St. Peter. guidance when these poor feeble-willed people emerge Next year the same soldier, serving in the Austrian lines on The force of habit, and perhaps i be fatal field of Sadowa, was severely wounded, and- therefrom gaol or home. the acute return of the craving for drink, may undot after lived as a pensioner in his Silesian home, the village in a moment any good that detention has seemed to ( of Litschen, where he kept a tobacconist’s shop. Forty effect ; for the poor victim of this besetment may turn ’ears had elapsed when, reading a biographical sketch into the public-house, and unless she is on the black list can ( of Pius X., he thought that the Pontiff could be no other be at once served with drink. A woman from Rochdale, it t han the parish priest of Tombolo who had relieved him in is stated, was recently committed at Bacup for a month. 1 is distress. Accordingly, he addressed the Holy Father in The chief constable said it was her 181st known conviction s modest letter, recalling the incident and asking if he were as
these,
___
,
seems