Specification of John Donaldson : preserving animal and vegetable substances.

Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Specification of John Donaldson : preserving animal and vegetable substances. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Donaldsons Improvements in Preserving Animal and Vegetable Substances. NOW KNOW YE, that I, the said John Donaldson, in compliance with the said proviso, do hereby describe and ascertain the nature of my said Inven¬ tion to be, as is herein-before set forth, a New Method of preserving Animal and Vegetable Substances; and that, farther, I declare the operation to be per¬ formed by an exact combination of certain principles, most wholesome and 5 nutritive, and which indeed are contained in vegetable bodies themselves; that is to say, not by means of any one principle, but by proportioning the farina¬ ceous vegetable principle with the coagulative or mucilaginous one, and supplying such combination by admixture according as the quality of the sub¬ stance or substances to be preserved may require. To be yet more particular, 10 in order to preserve any vegetable which is in itself of a water yor deliquescent nature, a greater portion of farina and mucilage is required than for others that are more solid and readily disposed to dry. Let the substance to be pre¬ served, for example, be carrot or turnip, the preserving matter may be com¬ pounded of wheat or barley meal, with solution of any common gum or 15 vegetable mucilage. The substance may be either preserved in a raw state or previously boiled or otherwise dressed, as their nature or occasion requires. But as the matters that may be preserved in this w;ay, including the preserving ones, are inuberable and various, it is impossible that any uniform rule can be given. Thus any simple farinaceous vegetable matter, combined with a 20 mucilaneous vegetable one, composes a preservative for other fresh vegetable or animal bodies or parts contained in them, which are of a less fixed or desecative nature. The substances, being thus accurately prepared, are dryed in a w ay simular to that by which malsters dry their grain, that is, by stoves properly heated or otherwise, as occasion may suggest. And, 25 lastly, they are carefully put up into wooden boxes or other close packages for keeping and use. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and seal, this Fourteenth day of March, One thousand seven hundred and ninety- three. 30 JOHN (i.B.) DONALDSON. Sealed and delivered, being first duly stampt, in the presence of Jas Richards, Essex C*, Temple. 35