UTILIZATION OF BRINE. 
517 
this city very considerable quantities of this brine were produced, and thrown away as 
useless. This was the material to which Mr. Whitelaw has applied the process of dialy¬ 
sis, and he thought with success, for the removal of the salts of the brine, and for the 
production, at a cheap rate, of pure fresh extract of meat. His process he stated as fol¬ 
lows : The brine, after being filtered to free it from any particles of flesh or other me¬ 
chanical impurities it might contain, was then subjected to the operation of dialysis. 
The vessels or bags in which he conducted the operation might be made of various ma¬ 
terials and of many shapes; but whatever might be their material or shape, he called 
them “ dialysers.” Such an apparatus as the following would be found to answer the 
purpose:—A square vat made of a framework of iron filled up with sheets of skin or parch¬ 
ment paper in such a way as to be water-tight, and strengthened, if necessary, by stays 
or straps of metal. The sides, ends, and bottom being composed of this soft dialysing 
material, exposed a great surface to the action of the water contained in an outer vat, 
in which the dialyser was placed. He found a series of ox-bladders fitted with stop¬ 
cocks, or gutta-percha mouth-tubes, and plugs, and hung on rods stretching across and 
into vats of water, a very cheap and effective arrangement. He could also employ skins 
of animals either as open bags or closed, and fitted with stop-cocks or bags of double 
cloth, with a layer of soft gelatine interspersed between them. Other arrangements 
would readily suggest themselves, and might be adopted according to circumstances. 
But supposing the bladder arrangement was taken, which he thought would be found 
practically the best, being cheap, easily managed, and exposing a great surface to the 
dialytic action. The bladders were filled with the filtered brine by means of fillers, and 
hung in row's on poles across, and suspended into vats of water. The water in those 
vats was renewed once a day, or oftener if required, and he found that actually at the 
end of the third or fourth day, according to the size of the bladders employed, almost all 
the common salt and nitre of the brine had been removed, and that the liquid contained 
in the bladders was pure juice of flesh, in a fresh and wholesome condition. The juice, 
as obtained from the “ dialysers,” might now be employed in making rich soups without 
any further preparation, or it might be concentrated by evaporation to the state of solid 
extract of meat. Mr. Whitelaw', at this stage, requested a friend present to heat a por¬ 
tion of the juice of flesh so as to produce a soup, and he asked the members to taste it and 
experience the result. He also had prepared more carefully a soup from the brine, to 
which he directed attention. (Both were found to be very palatable.) The brine used, 
he continued, was from one of the most respectable curing-houses in Glasgow, and was 
perfectly pure and w'holesome. The liquid from the dialysers might be treated in several 
ways. It might be evaporated in an enamelled vessel to a more or less concentrated 
state, or to dryness, and in these various conditions packed in tins or jars for sale. It 
might be concentrated at a temperature of 120 degrees, by means of a vacuum pan or 
other suitable contrivance, so as to retain the albumen and other matters in a soluble 
form. Again, the more or less concentrated liquid might be used along with flour used 
in the manufacture of meat biscuits. The products he had named were all highly nu¬ 
tritive, portable, and admirably adapted for the use of hospitals, for an army in the field, 
and for ships’ stores. The dialysis of brine might be conducted in salt water, so as to 
remove the greater portion of its salt, and the process completed in a small quantity of 
fresh rain, or other water. In this way ships at sea might economize their brine, and so 
restore to the meat in a great measure the nutritive power that it had lost in the process 
of salting. Thus then, Mr. Whitelaw said, he obtained an extract of flesh at a cheap 
rate, from a hitherto waste material. Two gallons of brine yielded one pound of solid 
extract, containing the coagulated albumen and colouring matter. For the production 
of the same directly from meat, something like tw'enty pounds of lean beef would be re¬ 
quired. The quantity of brine annually wasted was very great. He believed he v r as 
considerably under the truth when he said that in Glasgow alone GO,000 gallons were 
thrown away yearly. If they estimated one gallon as equal to seven pounds of meat in 
soup-producing power, then this w r as equal to a yearly waste of 187 tons of meat with¬ 
out bone. Estimating the meat as worth sixpence per pound, this amounted to a loss of 
£10,472. In this way the waste over the country must, he said, be very great. In the 
great American curing establishments the brine wasted must be something enormous, as 
he found that in eight of the Federal States 4,000,000 pigs were slaughtered and cured 
last season. Mr. Whitelaw concluded by quoting from Gregory and Liebig as to the 
value and efficacy of extract of meat. 
