Preservative

“ It will also occur to the reader that, since a small bulk of formaline represents a large volume of the diluted preservative, it is very conveniently stored, and a very small bottle of it taken for outdoor work may, on dilution with water, be made to yield all that is required for the preservation of the takings of a successful day, or even of a longer period. ”

“ The old Conserve mixed with Aromaticum Rosarum, is a very good cordial against faintings, swoonings, weakness, and tremblings of the heart, strengthens, both it and a weak stomach, helps digestion, stays casting, and is a very good preservative in the time of infection. ”

“ The employment of chemical preservative matters in articles intended for human consumption threatens to become a grave danger to health or well-being. Each dealer in food contributes but a little; each one claims that his particular article of food cannot be brought into commerce without preservative, and each condemns the use of these substances by others. ”

“ For instance, a food product which is artificially colored or to which a preservative has been added should have these facts appear upon the label. If a substance which itself is not a coloring matter be added to a food product for the purpose of preserving or intensifying the natural color of the food, the name of the substance shall be specifically mentioned, as, for instance, when sulfate of copper is used to intensify or preserve the green color of food products. ”

“ Substances known as preservatives are used in food preservation. Some of these are harmless, as sugar, salt, vinegar, and spices. Others are harmful, as formaldehyde, boric, salicylic, benzoic, and sulphurous acids, with their related compounds. Saltpeter and smoke are also preservatives. There is some doubt concerning the harmlessness of these latter preserving agents. Foods preserved with harmful materials should never be used. Good food materials can be preserved without the use of harmful preservatives. ”

“ If such preservatives contain unwholesome and injurious ingredients, their use by the housewife, or anyone else, in preserving fruits or food, would be as injurious to the health as if they had been added by a dealer or manufacturer to fruits or other foods before placing them on the market. ”

“ While from time immemorial certain articles of food have been preserved by salting, smoking, drying, or by the addition of sugar and in some cases of saltpetre, during the last quarter of the 19th century the use of chemicals acting more powerfully as antiseptics or preservatives extended enormously, particularly in England. A very Preservatives in food.large fraction of the British food supply being obtained from abroad, a proportionately great difficulty exists in obtaining the food in an entirely fresh and untainted condition. ”

“ Yet the consumer has a natural right to know if the food offered for sale is the best of its kind; fresh eggs, clean milk, meat from healthy animals, untainted and free from harmful preservatives, sound vegetables and fruit, manufactured and preserved foodstuffs unspoiled by the manufacturing processes, free from harmful preservatives, and of good flavor. Many people must be in danger of forgetting the flavor of a fresh-laid egg. ”

“ Another company producing a food product uses a deleterious preservative to enable it to foist a partially spoiled article upon an ignorant and unsuspecting public. Sickness, ill-health, reduced efficiency and even death follow unnoticed in the wake of the packages sent broadcast over the land. ”

“ The use of any kind of a chemical preserving agent on meat is most reprehensible, no matter what they may be. Unfortunately, experts differ respecting the influence of these chemical preservatives upon health. The users of chemical preservatives have employed experts of known fame and distinction to testify in favor of these products, while the consumer, perhaps, is not able to go to the expense of securing expert testimony, and, therefore, as respects numbers of witnesses, at least, chemical preservatives have an advantage. ”

“ We need to concern ourselves particularly with the character of our public water supply, air supply and food supply, the number of bacteria in milk, the fitness for human consumption of the meat, fowl, fish, and shell-fish sold in the public markets, and the use of adulterants and preservatives in canned and bottled goods. ”

“ During the period which has elapsed since chemically preserved food has been used, the mortality as a whole has declined, and while this naturally cannot be put to the credit of the preservatives but is largely due to better feeding in consequence of the introduction of cheaper foods, which are rendered possible to some extent by the use of preservatives, it conclusively establishes the fact that no obvious harm has been done to the health of the community. ”

“ Milk.—Milk adulteration means in modern times either addition of water, abstraction of cream, or both, or addition of chemical preservative. The old stories of the use of chalk or of sheep’s brains are fables. Owing to the wide variation to which milk is naturally subjected in composition, it is exceedingly difficult to establish beyond doubt whether any given sample is in the state in which it came from the cow or has been impoverished. The composition of cow’s milk varies with many conditions. ”

“ The great difficulty which history records is not that of the first step, but that of the second step. What is most evident is not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but getting out of a fixed law; not of cementing (as upon a former occasion I phrased it) a cake of custom, but of breaking the cake of custom; not of making the first preservative habit, but of breaking through it, and reaching something better. ”

“ The use of sugar as a preservative depends upon the fact that, although in a dilute solution it is highly prone to fermentation and other decomposition, it possesses bactericidal properties when in the form of a concentrated syrup. A sugar solution containing 30% of water or less does not undergo any biological change; in the presence of organic acids, like those contained in fruit, growth of organisms is inhibited when the percentage of water is somewhat greater. ”

“ Manufacturers of many articles of preserved food gradually adopted the use of chemical preservatives, and at the present time the practice has become so general that it may be said that practically every person in the United Kingdom who has passed the suckling stage consumes daily more or less food containing chemical preservatives. The Food Act allows of the addition of any ingredient, not injurious to health, if it be required for the production or preparation of the food, or as an article of commerce, in a state fit for carriage. ”

“ With the comparatively small amount of scientific investigation that has already been done we have reason to hope that not only can reddening be prevented, but that by the general refinement and improvement of methods it will become unnecessary to use artificial preservatives to prevent reddening. ”

“ All the methods of preservation are put in practice occasionally for fruits and the various parts of vegetables, according to the nature of the species, the climate, the uses to which they are applied, etc. Some are dried, as nuts, raisins, sweet herbs, etc.; others are preserved by means of sugar, as, for example, many fruits whose delicate juices would be lost by drying; some are preserved by means of vinegar, and chiefly used as condiments or pickles; a few also by salting, as French beans; while others are preserved in spirits. ”

“ That which is true in the vegetable is true in the animal world, as regards the pre-established order which regulates and controls the phenomena of life. These laws which govern the development of organic phenomena being immutable and everlasting, permit the different generations which succeed each other on our globe to build upon a durable basis, which certifies to the slow and laborious, but irresistible march of human progress. ”

“ FOOD PRESERVATION. The preservation of food material beyond the short term during which it naturally keeps sound and eatable has engaged human thought from the earliest dawn of civilization. Necessity compelled man to store the plenitude of one season or place against the need of another. The hunter dried, smoked and salted meat and fish, pastoral man preserved milk in the form of cheese and butter, or fermented grape-juice into wine. ”

“ To check putrid fermentations, to insure the conservation of animal or vegetable substances in a state of perfect integrity, only one means avails, but that is an infallible one—that of thoroughly precluding the access to them of the aerial germs of vibrios and bacteria. ”

“ His media are sterilized by the most elaborate precautions; everything in which the germs of disease delight, not merely morbid matter, dirt, decay, but even healthy atoms of animal or vegetable substance, which, having been alive, are subject to decomposition, are to be excluded, saving just such a simple minimum as may serve to keep the microbe alive and multiplying. ”

“ As the principles of sanitation are based on a knowledge of bacteria, the facts concerning these microscopic plants, which were taught in the lesson on the "Preservation of Food", have only to be reviewed and extended. ”

“ If we farther advance, from mere inactive matter to vegetable and animal life, we shall find them still governed by laws; more numerous indeed, but equally fixed and invariable. The whole progres of plants, from the seed to the root, and from thence to the seed again;—the method of animal nutrition, digestion,-39- secretion, and all other branches of vital oeconomy;—are not left to chance, or the will of the creature itself, but are performed in a wondrous involuntary manner, and guided by unerring rules laid down by the great creator. ”

“ Sanitation in relation to food deals first with wholesome and clean materials—meat from animals free from disease; fruit and vegetables free from decay; milk, butter, etc., free from harmful bacteria. The dangers are the transference to the human body of encysted organisms like trichina ”

“ Our present sanitary system comprises the exclusion, as far as possible, of closet refuse and animal and vegetable matters from the sewers, and secondly, the purification by filtration, &c., of the outpourings of the sewers, after the partial separation therefrom of the more solid constituents. ”

“ Why, I said, we know that all germs or seeds, whether vegetable or animal, when they fail to meet with proper nutriment, or climate, or soil, in proportion to their vigor, are all the more sensitive to the want of a suitable environment, for evil is a greater enemy to what is good than to what is not. ”

“ Health depends, among other things, on pure water, air unpolluted by coal smoke and poisonous gases which should be used as factory by-products.
And lastly, the life, happiness, and prosperity of man is conserved by all of these things. ”

“ Methods of food preservation may be broadly divided into two classes—first, those which accomplish their purpose by changing the physical condition of the food, as by drying, or cooking and hermetical sealing ”

“ Everyone is suitable for purifying excepting a deaf person, an idiot, and a child. R. Judah “allows a child, but disallows a woman and a neuter.”
5. Water may be prepared for purification in every vessel, even in vessels of dung, in vessels of stone and vessels of clay and in a boat. Water must not be prepared for purification in the sides of vessels nor in the bottom of a vase nor in the cork of a barrel nor in one's fists, since they are not used for filling water, and they must not purify with them. And the [pg 275] water of the ashes of the heifer is not sprinkled without a vessel. ”

“ Conserves consist of fresh vegetable matters beat into a uniform mass with refined sugar, and they are intended to preserve the virtues and properties of recent flowers, leaves, roots, peels, or fruits, unaltered, and as near as possible to what they were when fresh gathered, and to give them an agreeable taste. ”

“ Indeed, if we refer to any of the methods made use of and any of the experiments and observations of ancient and modern times, upon the preservation of alimentary substances, with which we are acquainted, we shall find that fire is every where the principal agent, either in the natural duration, or in the artificial preservation of vegetable and animal substances. ”

“ It is further expected that you will, as far as may be in your power, attend to the animal, vegetable, and mineral productions of the country, noting down every thing that may occur to you, and preserving specimens as far as your means will admit, especially some of all the ripe seeds which you may discover; when the preservation of specimens is impossible, drawings or detailed accounts of them, are very desirable. ”

“ Pure foods; Clean milk; Water supplies; Sewage disposal; Hygiene of the home and factory; The destruction of insects which transmit disease; The educational movement. “The book is offered as a corollary to the numerous excellent treatises on the theory of hygiene and the laboratory manuals, since the man in the field desires to know how sanitation of the home, of the school, of the factory and of the community can actually be obtained.” (Preface)
“The discussion of even the most technical subjects is made simple and the practical side of every problem receives primary emphasis. ”

“ Some are carriers, bringing food materials to the tissues and organs or conveying waste and morbid matter to the excretory channels of the body. Other cells manufacture chemical substances, such as sugar, fats, ferments, hormones etc., for the production of which man requires complicated factories. Still others act as policemen and soldiers which protect the commonwealth against bacteria, parasites and other hostile invaders. ”