50 ALIMENTATION. 



iments, it may be stated that the introduction of gelatine as 

 an article of diet, to the exclusion of other principles which 

 were known to be nutritive, was always followed by loss of 

 weight and the indications of more or less defective nutri- 

 tion. In other words, the introduction of gelatine did not 

 permit any diminution in the quantity of ordinary articles 

 of food. The whole question was finally settled by the 

 researches of Magendie, the reporter of the committee on 

 gelatine, in 1841. This report embodied the results of 

 numerous experiments on the effects of various nitrogenized 

 principles ; but the conclusions with regard to gelatine were, 

 that taken alone it was distasteful in the highest degree, 

 even to animals on the verge of starvation ; and that even 

 the agreeable jelly formed of different parts of the pig and 

 the giblets of fowl, prepared by the charcutiers of Paris, 

 at first taken by the animals with apparent satisfaction, was 

 refused after a few days ; and when animals were confined 

 exclusively to this article, death took place about the twen- 

 tieth day, with all the symptoms of inanition. 1 



The flavor of meat was formerly supposed to depend 

 chiefly on a peculiar principle, called, by Thenard, osma- 

 zome. This name is now seldom used, as the substance 

 which was so called is known to be composed of various em- 

 pyreumatic nitrogenized products, with lactic acid, the lac- 

 tate of soda, the inosate of potash, creatine, creatinine, and 

 other principles, the nature of which has not been deter- 

 mined. 



Most of the vegetable articles of food contain more or 

 less of nitrogenized principles which resemble very closely 

 their analogues in the animal kingdom. Some of these vege- 

 table principles resemble those above considered so closely 

 that they have been called respectively, vegetable albumen, 

 fibrin, and casein e. They all, however, present certain dis- 

 tinguishing peculiarities. 



1 MAGENDIE, Rapport fait d T Academic des Sciences au nom de la Commission 

 dite de la Gelatine. Comptes Rendus, Paris, 1841, tome xiii., p. 254. 



