Beef tea became very popular at one time as a nourishment for the sick, and there can be no doubt that many patients who were stricken down with different acute diseases slipped into their graves, because beef tea was relied upon with a belief that it was a sufficient nourishment. Observation and careful researches on the subject have proved conclusively that the nutritive value of beef tea as ordinarily prepared, that is chopped beef put into a bottle and boiled in a water bath for three or four hours, has been greatly exaggerated. The process of boiling the beef has no other effect than that of drawing out the watery substance of the meat. The phosphatic salts that are contained in the meat are also extracted with the serum which holds them in solution. The natural albuminoids (musculine) which constitute the real nutritive element of beef are congealed and surrounded by the fibrous tissue—that part which snarls up and renders the beef gristly and tough. Yet as a nutritive stimulant, beef tea possesses at times considerable value; it is an excellent vehicle sometimes, for instance an egg thoroughly beaten and added to a cupful of warm beef tea is a desirable form of liquid food for invalids. Eggs constitute a highly nitrogenized food and their nutritive value is even greater than that of stall-fed beef. The subjoined tables of chemical analysis give the definite quantity of each constituent that is contained in one hundred parts of egg and beef: STALL-FED BEEF. EGG. LEAN BEEF. Phosphatic salt 0.5 1.0 1.5 Albuminoids 10.5 15.0 17.5 Fat 45.0 12.0 6.0 Water 44.0 72.0 75.0 ————— ————— ————— 100.0 100.0 100.0 If we compare the analysis of egg with that of milk, a remarkable similarity will be observed, save one exception, namely the carbo-hydrate sugar of milk is lacking in egg, and in order that eggs have the same property of nourishing the body as milk, this element may be readily supplied by eating a little bread. The writer is familiar with the history of a case in which a patient was kept on an exclusively egg diet for five months, and during this time he increased his weight thirty-eight pounds; he consumed eight eggs and twelve ounces of bread a day. We hear considerable unfavorable comment in regard to hard-boiled eggs, and indeed for good and sufficient reason, but the indigestibility of the hard-boiled egg is not due to any change in the nature of the albumen because it is boiled; the cause is entirely mechanical. The reason is that a hard-boiled egg is not sufficiently divided by the ordinary process of mastication to allow the gastric juice to attack it from all sides; if it were finely pulverized either by the teeth or otherwise it would be as readily digested as a soft-boiled or raw egg.