An Open Letter to the Medical Profession.

“The proper medicinal value of Malt Extracts must be held to depend on the AMOUNT OF DIASTASE which they contain. * * ** In Malted Barley we have at command an unlimited supply of diastase powder.”

WM. ROBERTS, M.D., F.R.S.,

PROF. CLINICAL MEDICINE, OWENS COLLEGE; PHYSICIAN TO THE MANCHESTER INFIRMARY, ETC.

Since the introduction by us of the manufacture of malt extract in this country, many preparations of this class, possessing more or less merit, have been placed on the market; and some, at least, the device of adventurers on the alert for catchword medicinal novelties, being mostly inert malted grain syrups. Hence it has been our endeavor to have the quality of malt preparations determined by appropriate tests which may be conveniently applied by every one interested in the adminis tration of pure and reliable medicines. Every package of this Extract is accompanied with directions for making such tests, and the trade every-where have been long and repeatedly notified of our readiness to return the price in money or replace with fresh amylolytically active extract, any and every sample of our extract found to be deficient.

The superior amylolytic power of our Malt Extract has been proved not only by long clinical experience in hospital and private practice, but by careful and repeated analysis by some of the leading organic chemists of both Europe and America, whose reports thoroughly authenticated we are prepared to furnish on application. The mere physical properties of inferior proparations being liable to mislead, we have through our representatives, by means of honestly made and classically accurate tests, demonstrated the diastatic strength of our Extract, in the presence of thousands of physicians, pharmacists and apothecaries, both in private and at meetings of medical and pharmaceutical societies in every part of the United States.

The Trommer Company were the first to undertake the manufacture of Malt Extract in America, and the first in any country to employ improved processes in its preparation, with the object of preserving unimpaired ALL the soluble constituents of carefully-malted barley of the best quality, including, especially, the important nitrogenous bodies which possess the power to digest starchy food.

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We guarantee the uniform strength and purity of our malt extract. We are engage exclusively in this manufacture, and produce one quality only, and challenge any statement to the contrary by whomsoever made. We are able to furnish thoroughly convincing proof of its excellence, in the form of testimonials of physicians and chemists of high repute in America and Europe, many of whom in deference to a growing sentiment in the profession are averse to having their names appear in advertisements. We take pleasure, however, in submitting them in another manner to those who request it, free of expense. It is more than suspected that another class of testimonials which laud to the skies the wares of certain manufacturers, while denouncing an article of long established merit, have been in some instances too easily obtained. Suspicion is further aroused by the tergiversations and inconsistencies characterizing certain eager contributions which on occasion have found space in medic 1 journals, exhausting the vocabulary of good words in one issue, while in another the same preparation is pronounced to be an inferior product of a house engaged in fraudulent practices. The readers of such contributions would probably be edified if made acquainted with some facts having possible relations to their contradictory character.

For the general convenience we publish an approved method for the

ESTIMATION OF DIASTASE.

For carefully making this, have 12 clear and uniform 2-oz vials filled with distilled water, and two drops Iodine Solution prepared from 2 grams Iodine, 4 grams Iodide of Potassium and 250 grams water, a good thermometer and starch mucilage. To prepare the mucilage, 10 grams starch are stirred with 30 grams water and poured into 125 or 150 grams boiling water. The thermometer is then introduced and the temperature allowed to cool to 100° F. and maintained so by the water bath Ten grams extract of malt dissolved ir 10cc, water are then stirred into the mucilage, the time being accurately noted. After one minute a good extract will have converted the thick mucilage into a thin liquid. As soon as this change has taken place it is necessary to examine the progress of the conversion of starch into soluble starch, dextrin and sugar at the end of every minute, by the following method:

After the expiration of the first minute, transfer two drops, by means of a glass rod, into one of the 2-oz. bottles. Th bottle is shaken and placed near a window At the end of every minute repeat this manipulation with a new bottle until the coloration is no longer produced. The time necessary for effecting this change gives the indica'ion as to the amount of diastase present. Indecomposed starch mucilage gives a greenish blue co'or and after standing some time a blue precipitate. Soluble starch, the first product of the change, yields with Iodine, a dark blue solution without a precipitate. If the amount of soluble starch equals that of dextrin and sugar, the color of the solution will be purple. As the soluble starch disappears, the solution will be a decided red color if dextrin predominates, or faintly red if the sugar be in excess; and colorless. This experiment is v ry interesting and is simple to perform. For convenient methods for the estimation of solid matter and water, dextrin, sugar, etc., and determination of albuminates and free acid, refer to American Journal of Pharmacy.

TROMMER EXTRACT OF MALT CO.

BY DE WITT C. DAY, M.D., NASHVILLE, TENN.

[CONTINUED FROM JANUARY NUMBER.]

STARCH, in its protean combinations, undoubtedly forms the great bulk of humau food, and truly may be called the "staff of life." Starch as a food is usually derived from most edible vegetables, from fruits and from the cereals, maize or Indian corn, wheat, barley, oats, and rye. We also find it existing largely in rice, arrowroot, peas, potatoes, parsnips, carrots, turnips, etc.

Starch consists of minute granules of a peculiar laminated concentric arrangement, with a slight depression or hilum. These granules are readily recognized by striking a blue color when treated with iodine. Starch is wholly insoluble in cold water

In hot water these granules swell, burst, and lose their morphological character, forming a homogeneous mass, still subject to the iodine reaction. The size of these granules vary greatly, depending upon the different sources from which they are supplied; potatoes furnishing the largest and rice the smallest.

Starch is utterly incapable of absorption in any degree of attenuation with water; hence, absorption is secured by a transformatio in the alimentary track (first into dextrine, and secondarily into grape sugar) by the action of the saliva and the pencreatic secrétis transformation having been effected, it is readily absorbed by the villi, and passes into the portal vein

and liver.

Dextrine, the primary transformation starch, has the forT of mula C4H1005. It is identical in composition with starch, is adSheave in solution, and 4VAAffed 4dr Harch by the action of heat, the mineral acids, and by the action of diastase, a peculiar ferment developed in the germination of cereals. It does not exist in naturaiional provide transformation of starch into dextrine, losing quickly its identity as such, forming into grape sugar in the intestines. Extra-intestinal transformation is important to Iphysician, as we will show further on when speaking of fermentation and modes of cooking.

The record.producte af transformation, known as grape sugar or dextrine, has the formula- CH12O6. Cane sugar and starch may be converted into it by éhemical and natural means.

Of the other carbo-hydrates, lactine, or milk sugar, is the best 9knemmot ylbetduobau egoitsaid mos torq eti niняAT to Gums are boontained sim the juices, boplants and délld losergis 9 the basis of vegetable cell-waliszu ai boots as dostā ".til asi Bernards is scredited with the discovery of liver sugar destigting ginthes liveho Padly and McDonnell deny theexistenceof (such -in theoliver during life, but aqknowledge the existence iofylglycỏ gen, or animal dextrine, also discovered by Bernard.. Dalton, - bita) Laisks land others, bide with Bernard, and claim that sugar 9asdproduced inotheiliveq duringlelife, and is not the product of Π aslewd organic matterudinta yd besinyooer ylibs97 978 29luastg 191As be before remarked detarih diss the principationebatfthe

carbo-hydrates which we wish to consider, as it is the basis of bread, and bread is the "staff of life.”

The proportion in which starch is found in the principal articles of vegetable food may be approximately stated as follows: Arrowroot, 82 per cent.; rice, 79.1; rye meal, 69.5; barley flour, 69.4; wheat flour, 66.3; Indian meal, 64.7; oatmeal, 58.4; peas, 55.4; wheat bread, 47.4; potatoes, 18.8; parsnips, 9.6; carrots, 8.4; turnips, 5.1.

Fothergill remarks that "when wheat was first ground as by the two women sitting at the mill" that all the elements of the grain was found in the flour. A modern, perverted, and fastidious taste insists that the external dark coat shall be removed in the manufacture of flour. Now, the practical fact is that this bran contains the bulk of the salts contained in cereals, and flour which does not contain them is of inferior reconstructive quality.

Not only does much depend upon the grinding of flours as regards facility of digestive and reconstructive power, but much in the skill of the cook. It is of first importance that bread, to be easily digestible, should be porous or "light." With this view the flour should be kneaded into a soft dough, with a little salt and yeast flour, and set before the fire to "rise," as it is technically called. This yeast flour contains a fungus, or low form of vegetable life, and when acting upon a substance containing starch sets up vinous fermentation, or the conversion of the sugar of the flour into alcohol and carbonic acid. The latter, endeavoring to escape from the dough, distends it into vesicular spaces, like honey-comb, thus rendering it more porous for the action of the gastric and pancreatic juices. The alcohol produced is destroyed by the heat used in cooking. Other means of producing carbonic acid gas-such as the addition of bicarbonate of soda and the weak acids, as vinegar, buttermilk, etc.—are often resorted to.

Fothergill claims that the addition of ground malt to flours offers great possibilities in future bread-making.

Baking, no less than the initial preparations, is of the first importance. There is no doubt but the heat employed in cooking converts much of the insoluble starch of the bread into solu

the

ble dextrine. The amount of this conversion depends upon degree of heat employed and the time consumed in cooking. This fact, no doubt, suggested the preparation of the various "baby foods" which now flood the market, for all of which it is claimed that the starch of the grain used has been converted into dextrine. When in the case of children the secretion of saliva and the pancreatic juice have been diminished by disease, this conversion becomes of the utmost importance.

According to the experiments of Musculus, O'Sullivan, Brown, Heron, and William Roberts, the transformation of starch into sugar is not as simple as one might suppose, or as our text-books on Chemistry and Physiology teach. According to their views, it is a complex process, and terminates in the formation of maltose and achro-dextrine.

Ewald, of Berlin, has demonstrated conclusively, we think, that the saccharification of amylaceous foods in the stomach, even with the acid of the saliva, takes place to a very trifling extent; that in the stomach we may note the presence of fermentable dextrine and maltose, but that the transformation into sugar takes place exclusively in the intestines. We are the more confirmed in a belief of this theory from the fact that the pancreatic juice furnishes a ferment for the digestion and transformation of amylaceous matters.

We find that the cereals from which starch is derived have their zones of productiveness and quality, and, it might also be added general use. Wheat is essentially a grain of temperate climates, and is not grown in high or torrid latitudes. Maize or Indian corn is a product of sunny climes rather than temperate, having, however, a distribution over North and South America, many parts of the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and many of the isles of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

Oats are the production of the northern portion of temperate zones, and their general use is limited to those latitudes.

Rye and barley have about the same habitats as wheat, and rice is grown exclusively in hot countries.

Of all the cereals, wheat is, owing to the facilities of modern transportation, in most general use. It has the advantages of a