According to Bulletin 133, Bureau of Plant Industry, United States
Department of Agriculture, valuable fixed and volatile oils can be
produced from the kernel of the peach. Peach-stones are now burned as
fuel by most canneries, excepting small quantities sold to nurseries
for propagation. The possibility of producing oils from the kernels
seems well worth looking into, since there is now an enormous waste of
this part of the fruit by canneries. Oils extracted from peach-kernels
may be used for the same commercial purposes as the almond oils;
namely, in medicine, for soaps, cosmetics, perfumes and confections.
The processes of extraction and distillation are not complex and
establishments equipped with steam would have little difficulty in
extracting these oils. It is said, too, that the press-cake from
which the oils have been extracted makes valuable stock-foods or
fertilizers owing to its high content of nitrogenous matter. It is
estimated that in California alone the quantity of peach-pits obtained
as a by-products of canneries amounts to 10,000 tons in a normal
year; that these would yield from 600 to 1,200 tons of kernels from
which 210 to 420 tons of oil could be extracted. The wholesale price
of bitter-almond oil, or oils purchased under this name, for which
peach-oil could be substituted, is from $3.25 to $4.75 per pound.
Pliny named several medicinal uses for the peach and from his time
down the flesh, kernels, leaves, bark and blossoms have had a place
in the pharmacopoeia of various countries though nowadays little used
except in domestic therapeutics. All of the structures named abound in
a bitter and astringent principle and most of them produce hydrocyanic
acid upon maceration with water. The peach might have value in medicine
for this acid were not the chemical more easily obtained elsewhere. The
oils from the kernels, as we have seen, may be used in medicine. Noting
the medicinal uses to which peach-products have been put by various
peoples in various times we find: The leaves are pounded and boiled in
vinegar for a liniment, an eye-wash, a cure for "scurf," a preventive
of bald heads, and as an insecticide on the heads of children. The
blossoms, treated in various ways, have been used for the same ailments
and also as a febrifuge. The burned pits are also used in making
lampblack for paints.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account