106 
VALUE OF SUGAR. 
upon land, as they are emptied from the leach. I 
have seen hills of leached ashes lying about an old 
ashery, when the land contiguous would have been 
doubled in value by having them spread upon it. Be¬ 
ing about to embark in making potash again, I shall 
anxiously wait before doing so, to hear from some 
manufacturer, through your columns, on this subject, 
before I commence. I am desirous of availing my¬ 
self of any improvements on this old method. 
VALUE OF SUGAR. 
Since it is decided that Texas shall become a part 
of the United States, sugar will henceforth be one of 
our most important products. Its value as food to 
man, beast, and even birds and fish, is little known 
and understood by the people at large. It is general¬ 
ly contended by writers on food and diet, that sugar 
cannot support life, but facts contradict this assertion 
in several instances. Martin, in his History of the 
British Colonies, thus speaks of it: 
“ A small quantity of sugar will sustain life, and 
enable the animal frame to undergo corporeal and (as 
I can add from personal experience) mental fatigue 
better than any other substance. Often have I tra¬ 
velled with the Arab over the burning desert, or with 
the wild Afric through his romantic country, and, 
when wearied with fatigue and a noontide sun, we 
have set ourselves down beneath an umbrageous ca¬ 
nopy, and have shared with my companion his tra¬ 
velling provender—a few small balls of sugar mixed 
with spices, and hardened into a paste with flour, 
invariably have I found two or three of these balls 
and a draught of water the best possible restorative, 
and even a stimulus to renewed exertion. During 
crop-time in the West-Indies, the negroes, although 
then hard worked, become fat, healthy, and cheerful. 
In Cochin-China, the body-guard of the king are al¬ 
lowed a sum of money daily with which they must 
buy sugar-canes, and eat a certain quantity thereof, 
in order to preserve their good looks and embonpoint; 
there are about 500 of these household troops, and 
their handsome appearance does honor to their food 
and to their royal master. Indeed, in Cochin-China, 
rice and sugar is the ordinary breakfast of people of 
all ages and stations ; and they not only preserve all 
their fruits in sugar, but even the greater part of their 
leguminous vegetables, gourds, cucumbers, radishes, 
artichokes, the grain of the lotus, and the thick fleshy 
leaves of the aloes. I have eaten in India, after a six 
months’ voyage, mutton killed in Leadenhall market, 
preserved in a cask of sugar, and as fresh as the day 
it was placed in the shambles. In the curing of 
meat, a portion of sugar is often mixed with the salt 
and saltpetre. The Kandyans of Ceylon preserve 
their venison in earthen pots of honey, and after being 
thus kept for two or three years its flavor would de¬ 
light Epicurus himself. In tropical climates, the 
fresh juice of the cane is the most efficient remedy for 
various diseases, while its healing virtues are felt 
when applied to ulcers and sores. Sir John Pringle 
says the plague was never known to visit any coun¬ 
try where sugar composes a material part of the diet 
»f the inhabitants. Drs. Rush, Cullen, and other 
;minent physicians, are of the opinion that the fre¬ 
quency of malignant fevers of all kinds is lessened 
&y the use of sugar; in disorders of the breast it forms 
an excellent demulcent, as also in weakness and acrid 
defluxions in other parts of the body. Dr. Franklin 
found great relief from the sickening pain of the stone 
by drinking half-a-pint of syrup of coarse brown 
sugar before bedtime, which he declared gave as 
much, if not more relief, than a dose of opium. That 
dreadful malady, once so prevalent on ship-board— 
scurvy—has been completely and instantaneously 
stopped, by putting the afflicted on a sugar diet. The 
diseases arising from worms, to which children are 
so subject, are prevented by the use of sugar, the 
love of which seems implanted by nature in them. 
As to the unfounded assertion of its injuring the 
teeth, let those who believe it visit the sugar planta¬ 
tions and look at the negroes and their children, 
whose teeth are daily employed in the mastication of 
sugar, and they will be convinced of the absurdity 
of the statement.” 
To this the Scotch Journal of Agriculture adds 
the following summary: 
“ Dr. Willis imputed a corrosive quality to sugar; 
but, in disproof of this notion, Dr. Slare has related, 
in the Philosophical Transactions, No. 337, that his 
grandfather had, all his lifetime, been in the habit of 
eating at his breakfast, a great quantity of sugar 
spread upon his bread and butter, and that he used 
also to put sugar into his ale and beer, and even into 
the sauce he ate with his meat. When eighty years 
of age, he had all his teeth strong and firm, able to 
crunch the hardest crust, and free from all pain or 
soreness in his gums. In his eighty-second year, 
one of his teeth dropped out, and soon after he lost 
another, which was one of the front teeth: in fact, 
all his teeth dropped out in two or three years; but, 
what is most remarkable, they were replaced by the 
growth of a perfectly new set. His hair was at that 
time of a very white color, but it now became much 
darker. He enjoyed good health and strength, and 
died in the ninety-ninth year of his age. 
“ The French people are great eaters of sugar, al¬ 
ways carrying some of it about with them, in theii 
pockets and reticules, and generally putting five or 
six large lumps into each cup of coffee. 
“ M. Chossat reports that sugar, when used as the 
exclusive or principal article of diet, produces quite 
opposite effects in some persons, according to the dif¬ 
ferences in their systems ; for, while it fattens some, 
it creates bile which produces a diarrhoea and a wast¬ 
ing of the solids in other persons. The celebrated 
Bolivar had, by fatigue and privations, so injured the 
tone of his stomach, that he was unable at times to 
take any other food than sugar, which, in his case, 
was easy of digestion. His personal friends assure 
us that, in some of his last campaigns, he lived for 
weeks together upon sugar alone as a solid, with 
pure water as a liquid; but, probably, in nine hun¬ 
dred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, this 
diet would have brought the person adopting it to his 
grave ; for, on those whose digestion is feeble, a large 
or exclusive allowance of sugar adds to their griev¬ 
ance, because the excess of nutriment, not being 
generally absorbed by their weakened system, be¬ 
comes converted to bile, and causes great debility and 
wasting of the body. In seventeen experiments made 
on dogs, M. Chossat observed that, when the sugar diet 
fattened them, there was a general tendency to con¬ 
stipation meanwhile; and, on the contrary, when it 
produces an excess of bile in other dogs, their bowels 
were relaxed. Why English children suffer in theii 
digestion after eating largely of sugar-plums, comfits 
