San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1883-01-04
The Discovery OF Grape Sugar.
Scientific American.

t;6c;al sugar, is being made IN such
quantities, and so much has been said
and written for and against it, some
regarding it identical with the natural
sugar of fruits and honey, others dit,
lfering from it physiologically, II not
chemically, that our readers will be m
terested in the early history OF the
substance. TheIfrst mention OF 1t was
made by T. Lowitz in an article pub
Iisbed in Crell's Chemesche A,lncten Tor
the first half of the year 1872. rms
journal, then one of the leading sclen-
tific periodicals, is now SO scarce tnat
no public library in New York city is
in possesion of set of it. :,
fowitz discovered a peculiar kind
of sugar in honey, and gives quaint
but Interesting description OF the
manner in which he discovered and
I'VE may conclude, says Lowitz,
that honey owes it's sweetness to the
abundance of sugar it contains put
that no one knew how to separate tins
from the other constituents. This
separation was the chief object of his
experiments. First he succeeded IN
removing the peculiar taste, odor'
and color by filtering the diluted hon
ey over charcoal, but on attempting TO
concentrate the solution by evapora-
ton, it turned brown and showed no
tendency to crystalline.
After several months, he continues,
there appeared in my honey which
had been treated with charcoal ana
again concentrated, some very SMALL
white, shining bodies of crystalline ma
ture, which gradually increased IN
quantity, and finally filled out, for the tt
greater part, the whole mass OF the
honey. In order to be able to lnves-
tigate this granular substance, 1T IS nee
essary to carefully remove from 1t the
brown, thick, sticky substances. This
succeed ed best by washing it with cold'
highly rectifed spirits of wine alec
hoD. 1 was delighted to see that by
mixing strongly together, the alcohol
dissolved the adhesive matter without
perceptibly attracting the white granu-
| lar particles, which were finally en-
tireiy cleansed from it by frequent
washing with fresh alcohol. The SUI
gary substance that remained on the
filter, after gently drying, could be rub
bed to a fine and perfectly white pow
der, which did not attract moisture
from the air and possessed an agreea-
bly, sweet taste. ' =, :,
The author goes on to state that all
his efforts to obtain regular crystals
we're fruitless, that the crystalline
masses always resembled cauliHowers
Tor warts) and consisted Of very fine
needles. He also found that the So
luton turned brown by lime water,
and after precipitating the lime, an
acid remained. This sugar was de-
composed by other caustic alkalles, ne
saws. After discussing the difference
in the action of this sugar and other
sugar toward alkalies, Lowltz adds
that the other substance extracted. from
the honey sugar by alcohol differs from
it in no other respect except that 1t
cannot be obtained in a dry form by
any means; that to this latter sub
stance honey owes its property OF turn
ing brown by heat, for when the hon
ey sugar is freed from it the solution
can be boiled over the fire without
turning brown. Moreover, this sweet,
stickey substance resembles honey SUI
gar in all other properties, as well IN
taste as in it's action toward causuc
alkalies and quicklime.
He concludes with the assertion that
there is ohope of our ever being able
to make sugar from honey, as some
thing more is necessary than to mere
ly remove the foreign substances.
Reading these remarks with the
light that ninety years of research
have thrown upon them, they stand
forth as remarkable instances of cor
rect observation. The crystals which
lac obtained were dextrose, or ordina-
Nv glucose, while the uncrystalllzable
sugar is now known as levulose, a
mixture of the two constituting fruit
sugar as it exists in honey.
Ten years or more elapsed before
Kirchhoff discovered the now impor-
tant fact that this form of sugar could
be made from starch by the actions OF
dilute acids; and half a century rolled
away before the manufacture of SUI
gar from starch became one of the
large-very large-chemical indus
tnes.
aMHr-- erclaimei q tourist. q donk.