678 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
small quantities will inebriate, the taste of the alcohol becoming 
concealed. Both the throat Sweetbread, and the stomach 
Sweetbread, of the calf, are cellular organs held together by loose 
connective tissue, so that when taken as delicate foods they are 
easily dissolved in the stomach. Nine ounces of the true 
Sweetbread are completely disposed of by a healthy stomach 
in two and a half hours, while a similar weight of beef-steak 
demands at least four and a half hours for its complete digestion. 
But the cells of these Sweetbreads are chiefly composed of 
nucleo-proteid, for which reason (as explained concerning 
kidney foods, and liver) they are likely to disagree with gouty 
persons. 
It seems proved that the Stomach-bread (Pancreas) has to 
do with the occurrence of diabetic disease. If the organ is 
extirpated from a living dog, severe diabetes is brought about. 
For this reason, on the modern principle of treating with a 
curative aim the diseased condition, or perverted function of a 
human glandular organ by giving portions of the corresponding 
glandular organ taken freshly from a recently slaughtered, 
sound animal, (or extracts made therefrom by the chemist), it 
may be found highly useful to administer the Stomach-bread, 
or portions thereof, cooked or uncooked, from time to time to 
the diabetic patient, carefully watching the effects produced. 
The Stomach-bread of the sheep may be likewise experi- 
mentally employed in the same manner. The juice secreted 
thereby, as well as by the Stomach-bread of the calf, closely 
resembles our saliva, and contains a similar ferment, which can 
convert starch into dextrin, and dextrin into sugar (glucose), 
more powerfully indeed, and more completely than the saliva 
serves to do. “ Pancreatin” is the concentrated juice of the 
Stomach-bread procured from animals, and prepared by the 
chemist for emulsifying fatty foods, and starches, before they 
are taken as food, thus saving the Stomach-bread from work 
to which in the dyspeptic person it is unequal. For making 
this the animal Pancreas (Stomach-bread) is rubbed down with 
glycerin, so that its solvent principle, “ trypsin,” may be actively 
retained. The Pancreatin does its work best when in neutral, 
or alkaline solutions. Within the human system the Stomach- 
bread is chiefly stimulated by the acid gastric juice which reaches 
_ it from the stomach. Formerly a “ Sweetbread” signified — 
_ also in England a bribe, or douceur. “I obtained that from 
