EGGS. 249 
on adding a little white vinegar, or acetic acid, the cloud will then 
immediately disappear; not so, however, if albumen be its 
cause. An average fowl’s egg contains about one hundred grains 
of proteid food : as much of this, together with fat, as five ounces 
of new milk, but minus the sugar of milk. It is also reckoned 
to be the equivalent of rather under an ounce and a half of fat 
meat. The raw egg is somewhat laxative. Egg white is a capital 
substitute for raw meat juice. It consists of dissolved proteid 
enclosed within many thousands of cells; when this egg white 
is beaten up the cell walls are ruptured, and the proteid food- 
matter escapes. Some twelve per cent of egg albumin is present 
in the egg white, this being in no way inferior as regards nutritive 
value to the proteids of meat, save as lacking its vital force. 
One egg yields rather more than an ounce of white; and if 
to this be added twice its volume of cold water, and the 
whole quantity be then strained through muslin, there will 
be obtained three ounces of a clear solution containing as 
much proteid as an average specimen of commercial beef-juice.” 
All that then remains to be done is to stir into the same 
a little Liebig’s extract dissolved in a teaspoonful, or so, of 
warm water. 
Animal albumin is thus to be got from the white of eggs ; it 
may also be obtained from the serum (or thin liquid) of the blood, 
or from the juices of uncooked meat. Eighty-four dozen eggs 
produce from one to two gallons of the white, and this yields 
fourteen per cent of commercial albumin, while the blood of five 
oxen will supply about two pounds. The albumin is prepared 
for commercial purposes in a dry state. Dr. Carpenter showed 
that during hard work on the part of a labourer, a larger supply 
than usual of albuminoid food is necessary. In chronic Bright’s 
disease, with passage of albumin from the kidneys in the urine, 
for the majority of cases the best food is that advised for gout, 
a.e., a diet only moderately rich in proteid, and that chiefly 
derived from vegetable sources, and from which diet soups, and 
all preparations containing the extractives of meat are excluded. 
The egg yolk contains lecithin, which embodies natural phos- 
phorus in its most assimilable form, and which will serve to admir- 
ably recruit exhausted nerve structures through their leading 
centres when lacking vital energy. A confection of this lecithin 
principle is prepared by chemists for the use of children. Apples 
likewise contain similar lecithin, as a phosphorated compound, 
