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75
tissue; for the fat and true muscular substance
are to a greater or less extent deficient.
If, therefore, a hundred grains of the lean or
muscular part of good meat are cut up and dried
at a temperature of boiling salt and water (224
degrees Fahrenheit), they lose only from 69 to 74
grains of their weight; but if diseased meat is thus
treated, it loses from 75 to 80 per cent, of its
weight. I find that the average loss of weight
with sound and good beef is 72.3 per cent., and of
mutton 71.5 per cent., whereas the average loss of
diseased beef is 76.1 per cent., and of diseased
mutton 78.2 per cent. Even if it be dried at a
higher temperature, as at 266 degrees Fahrenheit,
when all the moisture is expelled, and when good
meat loses from 7-1 to 80 per cent, of its weight,
the proportions of loss in bad meat is equally
great.
Other characters, of a more refined nature will
also serve to distinguish good from bad meat. The
juice or serosity of sound flesh is slightly acid, and
it contains an excess of potash salts, chiefly the
phosphate; whereas diseased meat, from being
infiltrated with the serum of blood, is often
alkaline, and the salts of soda, especially chloride
and phosphate abound in it.