94 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



April, 



disposed of tlie innoculation theory 

 with a rush. 



This set me to questioning about 

 the rheumatism part of it. I examin- 

 ed his finger joints, and asked sly 

 questions of his wife, and I thus 

 found that he had undoubtedly suffer- 

 ed and was undoubtedly cured. 

 Indeed the knots in the joints could 

 still be felt. 



But there was one point that he 

 let drop which gave me the hint: — 

 From the day he took bee-keeping he 

 had never been without a jar of honey 

 on the breakfast table. 



And now for the theory of the 

 thing. About the causation of rheu- 

 matism little is known, but this much 

 is certain. The immediate (or per- 

 haps I should say, the mediate) cause 

 of rheumatism is "sarcolactic acid," 

 an acid that is formed from defective 

 change in muscle sugar. Is it not 

 possible that the taking of honey 

 affects the formation of this muscle 

 sugar just as honey mixed with glu- 

 cose (dare I say it?) affects the glu- 

 cose? 



Or, here is another suggestion, if 

 that does not please you. Formic 

 acid, the acid of honey, is similar in 

 its action to salicylic acid, the anti- 

 septic that is now taken into the 

 stomach as a cure for rheumatism. 



And lest you should think that this 

 is a pure speculation I may say that 

 for the last two years I have been 

 experimenting with this method of 

 cure and am personally quite convin- 

 ced that it is practicable where the 

 rheumatism is purely chemical and 

 has not gone on to the stage of actual 

 deformity and its accompaniments. 



And this brings me to the second 

 of the two diseases I purposed to re- 

 fer to. A disease that I somewhat 

 grudgingly speak about, and only pub- 

 lish because I have not here the 



opportunity of carrying out the ideas 

 that I have conceived. 



In a former paper you may remem- 

 ber that I hinted at 'a constituent of 

 honey more valuable than honey it- 

 self." I had in my mind at that time 

 the action of a certain product that 

 I am now going to speak about. 



Let us first consider the facts per- 

 fectly impartially. A bee goes to a 

 sappodilla, a plum, or an apple, or 

 an old molasses tub. And from these 

 sources it obtains "dextro-rotary" 

 sugar or dextrose. There is no ques- 

 tion about this. A scientist can put 

 it under the polariscope and see it 

 just as you can put a bug under the 

 microscope and see that it has six 

 legs. In the same way, so Prof. Cook 

 inform us, the sugar from flowers is 

 mostly dextrose. 



Under the action of a ferment 

 given it by the bee this dextrose be- 

 comes "digested" sugar, laevulose, 

 or honey. 



Further this action occurs, in the 

 main, not in the bee's body but out- 

 side of it. This point is borne in 

 upon us by (i) the phenomena it 

 explains. 



(a) Green honey when left on the 

 hive or kept in the sun at body tem- 

 perature ripens; ie., it loses its dex- 

 trose taste and takes on the oily taste 

 of laevulose. 



(b) Alexander, by placing honey in 

 warm tanks can artificially "ripen" 

 honey even before sealing it. 



(2) By the fact that honey is not 

 "ripe" till after it is sealed up from 

 the care of the bees in the hive. 



(3) By analogy. For we know 

 that human saliva can act upon starch 

 in a similar way outside the body, 

 provided the body temperature can be 

 maintained. Why therefore should 

 not bee-saliva act upon sugar outside 

 the body in a similar way? 



