OTTEOGENIZED ALIMENTARY PRINCIPLES. 47 



Of all kinds of muscular tissue, beef possesses the greatest 

 nutritive power. Other varieties of flesh, even that of birds, 

 fishes, and animals in a wild state, do not present an ap- 

 preciable difference, as far as can be ascertained by chemical 

 analysis ; but when taken daily for a long time, they become 

 distasteful, the appetite fails, and the system seems to de- 

 mand a change of diet. The flesh of carnivorous animals is 

 rarely used as food ; and animals that feed upon animal as 

 well as vegetable food, such as pigs or ducks, acquire a dis- 

 agreeable flavor when the diet is not strictly vegetable. 



Of the various methods which have been employed for 

 the preservation of meat, salting, which is the most common, 

 has the most unfavorable influence on its nutritive properties. 

 Experience has shown that salted meat is much less nutri- 

 tious than fresh, and the gravest effects on the nutrition of 

 the body have followed its prolonged use as the principal 

 article of diet. It has also been ascertained chemically, 

 that brine extracts from the muscular tissue much of its 

 nutritive principle. 



Albumen. This is an alimentary principle hardly second 

 in importance to musculine. As an article of diet, it is 

 chiefly found in the white of egg, where it exists in great quan- 

 tity, and is combined with a variety of inorganic substances. 

 Though an important alimentary principle, it cannot meet 

 all the nutritive requirements of the organism. Numerous 

 observations on the inferior animals, and those of Hammond 

 on his own person, 1 have shown that pure albumen will not 

 sustain life. The egg of the fowl, however, containing in 

 addition to albumen a large quantity of inorganic mat- 

 ter, the fatty matter of the yolk, and other organic prin- 

 ciples, is a most nutritious article of food. Albumen is the 



1 HAMMOND, Experimental Researches relative to the nutritive value and physi- 

 ological effects of Albumen, Starch, and Gum, when singly and exclusively used as 

 Food. Prize Essay Trans. American Med. Assoc., 1857, and Physiological 

 Memoirs, Philadelphia, 1863, p. 67. 



