REMARKS ON EXTRACTS OF MEAT. 
207 
Mr. Reynolds said that he had recently tested four specimens of iodide of potassium 
obtained direct from the makers in Paris. With one exception, all contained so much 
iodate as to make their use inadmissible, and all were much inferior to the salt of a well- 
known London manufacturer. 
REMARKS OK EXTRACTS OE MEAT. 
BY HENRY B. BEADY, F.L.S., ETC. 
(This was a short verbal communication, of which the following is as full a report as 
can be furnished.) 
The author stated that he should not have ventured to occupy the time of 
the Conference, already over-crowded with business, still less would he have 
intruded on the regular order of written papers, but for the concluding re¬ 
marks in the President’s address, and the desire which had been expressed b} 7- 
several members that he should, open the subject for discussion at that sitting. 
There were several forms in which the soluble extractive of meat had been 
used, either for general dietetic purposes, or for the convenience of the sick¬ 
room : the most important were those obtained from beer, and he would con¬ 
fine his remarks to them. Firstly, there were the fluid preparations repre¬ 
sented by Gillon’s “ essence of beefsecondly, those of gelatinous consist¬ 
ence, of which excellent examples were largely sold by one or two London 
manufacturers, to which class also belonged the so-called “ osmazome glacee 
thirdly, the more permanent soft extractive, free from gelatine, known as 
“ extractum carnis, Liebig and fourthly, a somewhat similar article, thick¬ 
ened with starchy matter, and evaporated further so as to form lozenges or 
tablets. On each of these he would say a few words :— 
Gillon’s “ essence of beef” was, he believed, exactly what the makers pro¬ 
fessed, a carefully prepared beef-juice, having many advantages over anything 
that had preceded it for use in the sick-room. There were, however, draw¬ 
backs in connection with it; it was insipid, variable in strength, contained a 
good deal of gelatine, and did not always agree with invalids ; still, it was a 
convenient and valuable basis for beef-tea, and it was fortunate that, with the 
present uncertain supply of other meat-extracts, there was anything so reli¬ 
able to be obtained, even at a somewhat advanced price. 
Of the gelatinous preparations he had only seen the “ concentrated beef- 
teas,” prepared by Messrs. Fortnum and Mason and Messrs. Brand and Co. 
These were supplied of the consistence of firm jelly? done up in skins, each 
weighing half a pound to a pound. They appeared to be, essentially, extracts 
of beef containing the gelatine, and when fresh, answered-well for the prepara¬ 
tion of beef-tea. The great objection to them was the difficulty of keeping 
them ; in a damp place the bladders moulded on the outside, in a dry place 
the jelly lost water, and after a time became quite hard, and about the texture 
of glue, in which condition it was dissolved with great difficulty.. The price, 
too, was against their general introduction. Recently, a material of some¬ 
what similar character had been largely imported into France, from Rio 
Grande, under the name of “ osmazome glacee,” of which he regretted that he 
had not yet been able to procure a sample, but it appeared, from all accounts, 
to have the worst qualities of this somewhat objectionable form of extract. . 
The third substance in order, the so-called “ extractum carnis,” of Liebig, 
might be said to have been introduced to the notice of the public in this 
country by a paper in the ‘ Popular Science Review for April, 1865, and 
within a short time the article itself was offered for sale in London, in small 
quantities, at a high price. Its recent commercial history was probably 
