1 Jury, 1898. ] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. — 65 
The development of our empire, too, is only now rendered possible by 
these portable and sustaining extracts. Pemmican and biltong were all very 
well, but now the question of whether an army corps can reach Coomassie 
_ with its available transport service, or whether a forced march beyond Berber, 
on the Nile, is possible, may depend upon such goods as are known by their 
epithets, “ extract,” “ condensed,” ‘‘ compressed,” &c. Lastly, in the sick-room 
and hospital, the value of a preparation of known strength, purity, and character 
may mean the saving of life. Scientifically made, there isno tear of a patient 
being nauseated by the watery infusion that many of us remember we have 
been compelled to swallow in our sick days of childhood, accompanied with its 
modicum of dry toast, until the very name of “beef-ter” has caused us to 
shiver. ‘Thero being this extended use for a good meat extract in the kitchen, 
in the tented field, in the peaceful scientific exploration far from the base of 
supplies, in the sick-room, and in daily life, as the basis of a useful, palatable, 
and honest beverage, the corollary follows that there must be an ever- 
increasing demand and popularity. To meet this demand,,we wish to place 
Australasia, and especially the cattle-rearing colonies of Queensland and New 
South Wales, in the forefront. 
The idea of concentrating the body of an ox into a thimblefui of elixir 
must have been a very old one. May be, the love potions and philtres of 
ancient and medieval witches were merely strong bowzllons, in which, when 
beef was scarce, “eye of newt and toe of frog” were used in the cauldron! 
Perhaps, in those days those came nearer to a true appreciation of the 
physiology of life sustenance who gave their patients raw meat. It must 
be remembered that meat extracts and concentrated foods are to meet the 
special circumstances of the sick, and not to supplant but to assist other foods 
with both them and the health. The work of Dr. Justus von Liebig in this 
respect has hardly met with its due appreciation. Certainly his name appears 
in various colours on different-shaped jars of different preparations, but the 
light he threw on the physiological action of food, upon its chemistry, and 
upon the concentration of its valuable constituents, has been forgotten and 
unappreciated, and, like Pasteur, the bulk of his life’s work is overlooked, and 
is name is only familiar to many of us in connection with a minor result of 
his devotion to study for the benefit of humanity. Be this as it may, Liebig, 
who died exactly a quarter of a century ago on April 18, laid down certain 
great principles of the chemistry of food which hold equally to-day as when 
he enunciated them. 
Years before Liebig, the celebrated physicians, Parmentier and Proust, 
endeavoured to procure a more extended application of the extract of meat; 
and Liebig, in his ‘‘ Familiar Letters on Chemistry,” published in 1859, quotes 
them, and shows how Parmentier had pointed out that extract of meat would 
offer to the wounded soldier 2 means of invigoration, and, with a little wine, 
“ instantly restore his powers weakened by loss ef blood.” Proust speaks in 
similar terms. Now Liebig, ever with a keen eye to the practical when any 
new scientific truth was elucidated, pointed out fifty years ago nearly that 
from the continents of America and Australia, where beef and mutton had 
then only a nominal value, we could, with the simplest means, collect immense 
quantities of the best extract of meat, the importation of which, he adds, 
.“might perhaps acquire a very peculiar importance for the potato-eating 
population of Europe.” It is equally important with the right manufacture 
of a meat extract that the public should know exactly what it is, and its true 
place in dietetics. In touching upon this chemico-physiological aspect of the 
matter, it must be understood I only give the broad outlines, and that there 
are modifications of the principles laid down ; but for my purpose, and for the 
purpose of the manufacture of “‘extractum carnis,’ these broad principles 
obtain to-day equally as they did when Liebig first laid them down. 
When raw meat is finely chopped and macerated in the same weight of 
cold distilled water and squeezed out, the water dissolves from 16 to 24 per 
cent. of the weizht of the dry flesh. ‘The fibrine of the flesh is about three- 
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