Saccharin

“ Saccharine, and other artificial sweetening agents, having antiseptic properties, are taking the place of sugar in beverages like ginger-beer and lemonade, but the substitution of a trace of a substance that provides sweetness without at the same time giving the substance and food value of sugar is strongly to be deprecated.
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 ”

“ Persons suffering from certain diseases, when sugar in any form cannot be taken, can have their diet rendered much more acceptable by the use of saccharine. The taste is very pure, and more quickly communicated to the palate than that of cane-sugar. ”

“ Particularly is this the case when the scientific designation contradicts so directly the popular idea of the article in question, as it does in the case of saccharine. To speak of a substance as an acid, which is admitted to be 300 times as sweet as sugar, is to confuse all our natural impressions with respect to the relative qualities of acidity and sweetness. ”

“ When spirits are made from a purely saccharine material the process of conversion into alcohol is a relatively simple one, but where farinaceous raw products are employed it is primarily necessary to transform the starch contained in them into sugar. ”

“ Saccharina or Sugar-Maple, furnishes to the North Americans an article well known under the name of Sugar, but which is generally obtained from the Sugar Cane or Succhnrum Officinarum of Linnæus. Manna is procured from a species of Ash termed Fraxinus Ornus: and many other vegetable products might be enumerated, were it not that they would form too distended a list for present consideration.
Plants, according to the places of which they are natives, require different degrees of heat. Elasticity is common to vegetables ”

“ The saccharine fruits, or those abounding in sugar, are nutritious and laxative, but are apt to ferment and disagree with delicate stomachs when eaten in excess. Stone fruits are more difficult of digestion than the other varieties, and are very apt to disorder the stomach and bowels.
As a rule, fruit should never be eaten in large quantities at a time, and only when quite ripe. It then appears to be exceedingly wholesome, and to be a suitable corrective to the grossness of animal food. It also exercises a powerful action on the skin, and is a specific for scurvy in its early stages. ”

“ Ants, according to the experiments of Mr. H. Devaux, perceive the difference between sugar and saccharine. They swarmed around sugar that was laid out for them, but deserted saccharine as soon as they tasted it. Even sugar became unpleasant to them when it was mixed with saccharine.
Prof. Otis T. Mason has been surprised, in examining a large collection of American aboriginal musical instruments, to find that not one was peculiar to women, and that those of the men were never played upon by the women. ”

“ By leaving off sugar and replacing it by saccharine our correspondent gains nothing. He is simply leaping from the frying pan into the fire. It is best for him to cultivate a taste for unsweetened or even acid drinks.
3. A dilated heart is usually an after effect of a dilated stomach, which strains it, just as it does every other organ, whether in the chest or the abdomen.
4. Bathing the chest with cold water is not desirable. What is needed is that the correspondent should drink as little fluid as possible and pay close attention to the condition of his digestive mechanism. ”

“ Sugar, starch, and glue are the chief ingredients in the sustenance of man. The saccharine matter is in everything that grows here: it is in the vegetables and in the animals. We have as good beef as there is in the world, furnishing gluten—a substance that acts its part in sustaining man. ”

“ Experiments with varying amounts of diastase showed that one part of salicylic acid to 1,000 of liquid prevented the diastasic action completely. Saccharine in the proportion of 1 to 1,000 prevented the formation of sugar when the proportion of diastase was 1 to 1,000 of liquid. ”

“ I have not found starchy matter so troublesome as the saccharine, which, I think, largely increases acidity as well as fat, but, with ordinary care and observation, people will soon find what food rests easiest in the stomach, and avoid that which does not, during the probationary trial of the proposed dietary. ”

“ The starchy and saccharine parts of the food are destined to pass through a series of changes, which ends also in their being burnt and oxidized, maintaining the animal heat, and forming Carbonic acid. Starch passes first into grape-sugar, by taking into itself two atoms of water, becoming C12H12O12. The Ptyaline of Saliva, Pepsin of the gastric juice, and some similar principle in the Pancreatic fluid, are all capable of causing this first transformation. This sugar is more soluble than Starch. When in the blood, it undergoes a further change, the nature of which is not so clear. ”

“ If we add the substances we have been examining to a saccharine solution exposed to fermentation, a slackening of the fermenting process will take place, and the different substances will, as before, exhibit their power to delay the process in the following order: scatol, hydrocinnamic acid, indol, phenylacetic acid, kresol, carbolic acid. ”

“ The saccharine compound does exist as a chemical quantity, and has a special effect on the nerves of taste, exciting them peculiarly, the result of the excitement being the idea of sweetness.
Is the rose fragrant? The sense of smell is indeed only a continuation of that of taste. In smelling, the nerves are touched by only infinitesimally small particles of the substances reaching them, and are only able to receive an impression from this excessive distribution. ”

“ The capacity of our digestive organs sufficiently testifies that nature never intended them for the reception of highly concentrated food, while this idea is farther strengthened by perceiving how sparingly she produces concentrated aliment; the saccharine matter of esculent fruits is generally blended with acidulous and mucilaginous ingredients ”

“ If it is pushed to such a degree as to occasion the perfect developement of the radicle and the plume, a considerable quantity of saccharine matter will have been consumed in producing their expansion, and there will be less spirit formed in fermentation, or produced in distillation. ”

“ On other estates the second sugars, or sugars produced from boiling molasses alone, are not purged to dryness, but when sufficiently separated from their mother-liquor are mixed with the defecated juice, thereby increasing its saccharine richness, and after being converted into syrup in the usual manner are treated in the vacuum pan as first sugars, which in fact they really are. ”

“ M. Gay Lussac cautions, however, against the conclusion, that this change is an organic one, since it is possible that the transformation may be due to an action purely chemical between the saccharine and organic" matter. ”

“ Thus the intestine eliminates sugar in a way that entirely resembles its elimination by the kidneys. The sugar appears in the blood after the infusion of a certain amount of the salt solution and is excreted by the kidney. If the kidneys are removed, it is excreted by the intestine. But even when the kidneys are intact there is a certain amount of sugar excreted by the intestine, just as a part of the fluid injected is eliminated by the intestine when the kidneys are still active. As shown in the following experiment, the sugar appears both in the intestinal juice and in the urine. ”

“ The juices of some bitter vegetables, as of the poppy and the laurocerasus, and the ardent spirit produced in the fermentation of the sugar found in vegetable juices, are so agreeable to the nerves of the stomach, that, taken in a small quantity, they instantly pacify the sense of hunger; and the inattention to external stimuli with the reveries of imagination, and sleep, succeeds, in the same manner as when the stomach is filled with other less intoxicating food. ”

“ A relish for sugar lessens the inclination for alcohol, and seldom accompanies the love of strong drink.
With young children, cane sugar is apt to form acids in the stomach, chiefly acetic, by a process of fermentation which causes pain, and flatulence, so that milk sugar should be given instead to those of tender years who are delicate, as this produces only lactic acid, which is the main constituent of digestive gastric juice. ”

“ Once within the villus, the sugars and digested proteins pass through tiny blood vessels into the larger vessels comprising the portal circulation. These pass through the liver, where, as we have seen, sugar is taken from the blood and stored as glycogen. From the liver, the food within the blood is sent to the heart, from there is pumped to the lungs, from there returns to the heart, and is pumped to the tissues of the body. A large amount of water and some salts are also absorbed through the walls of the stomach and intestine as the food passes on its course. ”

“ About two-thirds or our food ordinarily consists of starchy materials which are digested into sugar. When we add to this the sugarlike remains of all the protein food which is not actually used for the repair of tissues we see that this substance makes up the great bulk of the material which is carried by the blood to the tissues. This material is handled in the body in an interesting way which depends on the curious fact that although sugar is the most important fuel for living cells they cannot endure its presence in them or in the fluids surrounding them except in very small amounts. ”

“ SPIRITS NITRE. For RHUS POISONING (poison oak) apply sweet SPIRITS OF NITRE. Where the discharge of urine is attended with heat and pain, pound a handful of melon or pumpkin seed with a lump of white sugar, add a quart of boiling water, then add half an ounce of spirits of nitre and rub them together. A teacupful may be taken every two hours by adults.
OTHER REMEDIES, REGIMEN, &C. For STRANGURY use bee tea made by pouring a pint of boiling water on fifteen or twenty honey bees. ”

“ Under ordinary circumstances, nearly the whole of the sugar formed in the intestine and absorbed from it is arrested in the liver, so that very little passes into the general circulation and appears in the urine, although even in healthy persons traces of sugar are excreted by the kidneys. Under exceptional circumstances, however, sugar may pass through in considerable quantities, as, for example, when the individual takes, on an empty stomach, a large quantity of sirup. However healthy his organs may be, sugar will then appear in the urine. ”

“ In addition to the pancreatic juice and bile there is a secretion known as intestinal juice which is poured out by small glands scattered along the wall of the small intestine. These secrete enzymes which convert the various kinds of sugar into the particular sugar, glucose, which is the one the body can use. The glands also secrete an enzyme which can carry on to completion protein digestion. Thus there is ample insurance that all the foodstuffs shall be made ready for the use of the body. ”

“ There is that which until recent years was supposed to be the sole hepatic process—the formation of bile. In some liver-cells are masses of oil-globules, which seem to imply a carbo-hydrate metamorphosis. And then, of leading importance, comes the extensive production of that animal-starch known as glycogen—a substance which, in each of the cells generating it, is contained in a plexus of protoplasmic threads: again a nitrogenous body diffused through a mass which is now formed out of sugar and is now dissolved again into sugar. ”

“ The common cane-sugar, which everyone knows so well, is about the most useful food we have, owing to its purity, and therefore concentration, and its simplicity. A very small amount of digestion is necessary to convert it into the simplest of all carbohydrates, a substance easily stored, as glycogen, till wanted, which is present in muscle after a meal, and is used up when the muscle is active, being oxidized to carbonic acid gas, sarcolactic acid, and alcohol. ”

“ It is also vermifuge; the dose 4 direms.
702 Kutara كتارا.—A kind of sugar-cane; it is thin, cool, and heavy; cures diffusion of bile and Rajiroge. The leaves of one [117] kind are like needles, another much larger, a third of a middling size: all are astringent, and after meals produce heart-burn, and wind; they cure disorders of mucus and bile, but cause heat in the chest and flatulence. Its correction is being boiled in water, or roasted in hot ashes. When washed in water it becomes less flatulent, and cures disordered secretions, increases the bulk of the solids, and is diuretic. ”

“ Taking the classes of foods, starch, one of the carbohydrates, is the one most affected by the ptyalin, or animal diastase, of the saliva. So energetic is the action of ptyalin on starch that 1 part is sufficient to change 1000 parts. Starch is not acted upon by the gastric juice of the stomach at all; however, the continued action of the saliva is not probably interrupted in the [52] stomach. The digestion of starch is completed by the action of the pancreatic and intestinal juices, and consists in its being changed into soluble glucose, which is absorbed in solution. ”

“ The decoction thereof with Succory and Centaury is held very effectual to help the dropsy, and them that are inclining thereunto, and the diseases of the spleen. It stays the fluxes of blood, either at the mouth or nose, and inward bleeding also, for it is a singular wound herb for wounds both inward and outward: It helps the bloody flux, and helps the abundance of women’s courses. There is a syrup made of the juice hereof and sugar, by the apothecaries of Italy, and other places, which is of much account with them, to be given to those that are troubled with the cough or phthisic. ”