Creative Chemistry: Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical IndustriesSlosson, Edwin E. (Edwin Emery)
Science
Creative Chemistry: Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries
Slosson, Edwin E. (Edwin Emery)
Chemistry, Technical
The other ingredients of commercial glucose, the maltose and dextrin,
have of course the same food value as the dextrose, since they are made
over into dextrose in the process of digestion. Whether the glucose
syrup is fit to eat depends, like anything else, on how it is made. If,
as was formerly sometimes the case, sulfuric acid was used to effect the
conversion of the starch or sulfurous acid to bleach the glucose and
these acids were not altogether eliminated, the product might be
unwholesome or worse. Some years ago in England there was a mysterious
epidemic of arsenical poisoning among beer drinkers. On tracing it back
it was found that the beer had been made from glucose which had been
made from sulfuric acid which had been made from sulfur which had been
made from a batch of iron pyrites which contained a little arsenic. The
replacement of sulfuric acid by hydrochloric has done away with that
danger and the glucose now produced is pure.
The old recipe for home-made candy called for the addition of a little
vinegar to the sugar syrup to prevent "graining." The purpose of the
acid was of course to invert part of the cane sugar to glucose so as to
keep it from crystallizing out again. The professional candy-maker now
uses the corn glucose for that purpose, so if we accuse him of
"adulteration" on that ground we must levy the same accusation against
our grandmothers. The introduction of glucose into candy manufacture has
not injured but greatly increased the sale of sugar for the same
purpose. This is not an uncommon effect of scientific progress, for as
we have observed, the introduction of synthetic perfumes has stimulated
the production of odoriferous flowers and the price of butter has gone
up with the introduction of margarin. So, too, there are more weavers
employed and they get higher wages than in the days when they smashed up
the first weaving machines, and the same is true of printers and
typesetting machines. The popular animosity displayed toward any new
achievement of applied science is never justified, for it benefits not
only the world as a whole but usually even those interests with which it
seems at first to conflict.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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