Herissant, in 1758, undertook a remarkable research on bones. He steeped them in a mixture of four parts of water and one part of fuming nitric acid, and found that after a time they had lost their hardness, and were represented by an insoluble matter which had retained the shape of the bones, was flexible and of organic nature ; a calcareous matter had dissolved in the acid ; it was not then diagnosed as phosphate and carbonate of lime, but the fact was proved that bone consists of an organized tissue and a calcareous matter. In 1766 Herissant extended these inquiries to the shells of molluscs living on the earth, or in fresh or salt water, and to madrepores and corals. In 1775 Changeux published, in the Journ. de Physique, an extensive article ‘ on a mode of extracting alimentary matters from several substances in which they were not known to exist,’ etc. According to him some spoonfuls of powdered bone of the ox or calf, boiled for an hour with water, ‘ should yield an enormous quantity of jelly, as savoury and restorative as the jelly of meat.’ In 1791 Proust perceived that the substance which yields gelatine exists in flesh and bone, and that although it is present in flesh in much smaller quantities than in bone, it is much more easily dissolved out of flesh than it is out of hone, in which latter it is hardened and compressed in cells impregnated with bone-earth. He compared the quantity t Journ. Gen. de Mid. Hx. 120. * ‘ Annotationes Chemicfe.’ BOUILLON D'OS 129 of gelatine obtainable from powdered bone on the one hand, and from merely roughly-broken bone on the other ; he found that the qualities of gelatine obtained from different parts of the same skeleton were not identical : that from ribs was better than that from pelvic bones ; jelly from mutton bones had the flavour of mutton. Proust also studied the extraction of fat from hones. The hardest bones contained 0‘05 per cent, of fat at the outside, others yielded 0T25, and others even 0'25 per cent.* Por the extraction of the fat the bones, broken into rough pieces, have to be boiled in water ; they must not be powdered, as the fat remains adherent to the powder, and does not rise on the water. (Calcined magnesia has a similar detaining effect upon lard.) \ These observations of Proust were given in a separate , publication, of which ten years later, in 1801, he published I an abstract.! In 1803 Cadet Devaux published a brochure on gelatine, j; This author, one of the so-called ‘ philanthropists ’ of that . period, exhibited a tendency to imposture by speaking of gelatine as if it were his own discovery ; he intentionally did not read, he alleged, the essays on gelatine of his pre- decessors, for fear that their ideas might ‘ chain up and paralyze his own thoughts.’ Only in 1818 he mentioned Papin, and called his digester ‘ a volcano - hydraulic I machine,’ and declared it unsuitable for the extraction of gelatine from bone. The dog, he averred, discovered the : utility of bone for alimentation ; he, Devaux, only imitated : the dog by breaking, dividing, and moistening bones. He By boiling the bones from the ration meat of the soldiers during at fifteen hours, distributed over three days, the cooks in the camp at Aldershot extract 5 oz. of fat from 20 lb. of bones, or a little more' than I’O per cent.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

Herissant, in 1758, undertook a remarkable research on bones. He steeped them in a mixture of four parts of water and one part of fuming nitric acid, and found that after a time they had lost their hardness, and were represented by an insoluble matter which had retained the shape of the bones, was flexible and of organic nature ; a calcareous matter had dissolved in the acid ; it was not then diagnosed as phosphate and carbonate of lime, but the fact was proved that bone consists of an organized tissue and a calcareous matter. In 1766 Herissant extended these inquiries to the shells of molluscs living on the earth, or in fresh or salt water, and to madrepores and corals. In 1775 Changeux published, in the Journ. de Physique, an extensive article ‘ on a mode of extracting alimentary matters from several substances in which they were not known to exist,’ etc. According to him some spoonfuls of powdered bone of the ox or calf, boiled for an hour with water, ‘ should yield an enormous quantity of jelly, as savoury and restorative as the jelly of meat.’ In 1791 Proust perceived that the substance which yields gelatine exists in flesh and bone, and that although it is present in flesh in much smaller quantities than in bone, it is much more easily dissolved out of flesh than it is out of hone, in which latter it is hardened and compressed in cells impregnated with bone-earth. He compared the quantity t Journ. Gen. de Mid. Hx. 120. * ‘ Annotationes Chemicfe.’ BOUILLON D'OS of gelatine obtainable from powdered bone on the one hand, and from merely roughly-broken bone on the other ; he found that the qualities of gelatine obtained from different parts of the same skeleton were not identical : that from ribs was better than that from pelvic bones ; jelly from mutton bones had the flavour of mutton. Proust also studied the extraction of fat from hones. The hardest bones contained 0‘05 per cent, of fat at the outside, others yielded 0T25, and others even 0'25 per cent.* Por the extraction of the fat the bones, broken into rough pieces, have to be boiled in water ; they must not be powdered, as the fat remains adherent to the powder, and does not rise on the water. Calcined magnesia has a similar detaining effect upon lard.) \ These observations of Proust were given in a separate , publication, of which ten years later, in 1801, he published an abstract. In 1803 Cadet Devaux published a brochure on gelatine. This author, one of the so-called ‘ philanthropists ’ of that . period, exhibited a tendency to imposture by speaking of gelatine as if it were his own discovery ; he intentionally did not read, he alleged, the essays on gelatine of his predecessors, for fear that their ideas might ‘ chain up and paralyze his own thoughts.’ Only in 1818 he mentioned Papin, and called his digester ‘ a volcano - hydraulic I machine,’ and declared it unsuitable for the extraction of gelatine from bone. The dog, he averred, discovered the : utility of bone for alimentation ; he, Devaux, only imitated : the dog by breaking, dividing, and moistening bones. He By boiling the bones from the ration meat of the soldiers during at fifteen hours, distributed over three days, the cooks in the camp at Aldershot extract 5 oz. of fat from 20 lb. of bones, or a little more' than I’O per cent.

The spirit of cookery