144 



OLEOMARGARINE. 



degree than any of the other fats, and that, on the other hand, the vege- 

 table oils are the least readily absorbed. 



"A. Mayer experimented to determine whether natural or artificial 

 butter was the easiest absorbed by the system. He took a man and a 

 boy and fed them for three days on various mixtures of bread, milk, 

 eggs, and vegetables, together with natural butter. Then followed 

 two days' rest, they being fed on ordinary diet; after which for three 

 days they were given precisely the same food as on the first three 

 days, except artificial was substituted for natural butter. Each suc- 

 cessive day of the experiment the solid evacuations were collected and 

 analyzed, commencing twenty-four hours after the beginning of the 

 experiment. The amount of fat in the excrements was estimated, 

 which determined the amount of fat that had been absorbed. The 

 following is the percentage of the amount absorbed: 



"It will be seen^ therefore, that the average was about 1.6 per cent 

 less of the artificial absorbed than of the natural. The greatest differ- 

 ence was 2. 5 per cent less of the artificial. The experimenter concludes 

 that except in sickness this trifling difference may be overlooked with 

 safety. 



"Of course, these experiments were not carried on long enough to 

 be of much value, but as far as they go they harmonize exactly with 

 our idea of the difference in the absorption of these two articles. If 

 this difference was manifest in three days, we would expect a very 

 much greater difference in three months. 



" Magendie's experiments on dogs for the purpose of testing the 

 effect of feeding nothing but fat incidentally shows a striking differ- 

 ence in the life-sustaining power between butter and lard. He used 

 two dogs for the experiment. One he fed butter and the other lard. 

 The first lived sixty-eight, the second fifty-six days; that is, the dog fed 

 on butter lived twelve days longer than the other, or one-fourth of the 

 whole time which the other dog lived. 



"The liability of conveying disease germs into the human system 

 through artificial butter is, in our opinion, greater than is supposed by 

 those not familiar with the subject. In the first place, investigations 

 are showing that many more diseases than was formerly supposed are 

 communicable from animal to man. The following are some of those 

 known to be such: Consumption, anthrax, trichinosis, tapeworm, 

 glanders, foot-and-mouth disease, cowpox, hydrophobia, etc. Many 

 more, as epidemic pleuro-pneumonia, smallpox of sheep, splenic 

 apoplexy, braxy of sheep, typhus, etc., have, when the flesh of ani- 

 mals suffering from them was eaten, produced serious sickness in 

 human beings. 



4 ' We would like to give the history of these diseases and also of the 

 cases of the sickness resulting from consumption of the flesh of these 



