78 
REMARKS  ON  EXTRACTS  OP  MEAT. 
article  itself  was  offered  for  sale  in  London,  in  small  quantities, 
at  a  high  price.  Its  recent  commercial  history  was  probably 
known,  by  dire  experience,  to  all  present — its  very  excellence 
seemed  to  be  the  likeliest  cause  of  its  failure  in  a  commercial 
point  of  view.  The  demand  had  been  excessive  ;  the  supply, 
hitherto,  had  been  very  limited.  The  process  employed  in  its 
manufacture  had  been  suggested  some  years  ago  by  Baron 
Liebig,  though  it  had,  until  recently,  only  been  carried  out  on 
a  comparatively  small  scale.  In  the  Royal  Pharmacy,  at 
Munich,  it  was  still  prepared  to  a  considerable  extent,  under 
the  direction  of  Professor  Pettenkofer,  and,  indeed,  they  had  a 
ready  sale  for  all  they  could  make  at  the  somewhat  high  price 
of  a  florin  and  twelve  kreutzers  (a  little  over  two  shillings) 
per  ounce.  The  process  as  settled  by  Liebig  and  Pettenkofer 
had  been  adopted  in  the  Bavarian  Pharmacopoeia,  and  was 
closely  followed  in  the  laboratory  at  Munich.  It  was  pretty 
much  as  follows,  speaking  from  memory  : — 
Five  pounds  of  fresh  beef,  cut  very  small  and  deprived  of 
bone,  tendon,  and  fat,  were  digested  at  212°  (in  a  steam  pan) 
for  an  hour  in  ten  pounds  of  water,  and  the  liquor  separated  by 
strong  pressure ;  the  residue  again  digested  in  a  similar  way 
with  the  same  quantity  of  water,  and  again  subjected  to 
pressure.  The  mixed  liquids  were  evaporated  to  about  three 
pounds  weight,  and  allowed  to  cool ;  after  standing,  the  fatty 
matter  was  skimmed  off,  and  the  evaporation  continued  until  an 
extract  of  ordinary  consistence  was  obtained.  Ten  pounds  of 
meat  should  yield  six  ounces  of  extract.  A  specimen  of 
extract  so  prepared,  given  him  by  Professor  Pettenkofer  during 
a  recent  visit  to  Munich,  was  on  the  table,  and  it  would  be  found 
to  possess,  in  a  high  degree,  the  qualities  sought  in  such  a  pre- 
paration. The  process  originally  devised,  which  depended  only 
on  heat  and  strong  pressure  for  the  exhaustion  of  the  meat,  had 
been  found  wasteful  in  practice,  and  had  been  discontinued  in 
favor  of  the  use  of  water,  as  in  the  formula  given. 
The  large  numbers  of  wild  or  semi-wild  cattle  slaughtered  in 
South  America  for  the  sake  of  their  hides  and  fat,  suggested  an 
obvious  source  for  the  cheap  production  of  such  an  extract,  and 
though  long  neglected,  the  matter  had  been  recently  taken  up 
