The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1903-08-02
SCIENTISTS SEEK
TO TURN SAWDUST
INTO TABLE SUGAR
Curious Problem Upon Which
Chemists Are Engaged -
Many Other Sources of Sug-
ar Supply Seldom Heard of.

Special to The Globe.
science has long ago given up it's
search for the mysterious "Ph1los-
ophers Stone" with which the me-
diaeval "alchemists" cheerfully mag
ined that the baser metals could be
changed to gold, there still remain
problems almost equally tempting 10
the Imagination and probably quite as
hopeless of practical solution To turn
sawdust into table sugar is one OF
these problems. In fact, sawdust has
already been turned into sugar, only
this sugar is not the ordinary table
variety that could it only be produced
economically and on large scale from
the mountains of Sawdust that yearly
accumulate in American lumber yards,
would make the fortune of whoever in
vented the process. AS in the case OF
the Philosophers Stone there are diff
culties; and even at it's best the pro-
cess has only proved that grape sugar
"a variety such as is found in many
fruits and may be seen and tasted
crystalized naturally on the surface Of
dried grapes-can be made from saw
dust by process altogether too costly
to have a practical commercial value.
To transform this grape into the vast
ly more profitable table necessity now
derived from cane and beet is gener-
ally admitted to present insuperable
obstacles.
But One of the Problems.
Despite the general pessimism of the
sugar chemists, however, the grape
sugar end of the problem is considered
one of the very interesting side investl-
cations of the sugar laboratories. Ii
inplII6Q oil fhpCQ Ia hnr9f AripS-fnp
private workshops of individual in
vestigators, the commercial labora-
tories of the big manufacturing plants
and such student laboratories as that
of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech
nology when student research is often
conducted along lines practically par
allel with those of the big manufac-
turers themselves-we should probably
find some hundreds of sugar chemists
bordering the problems of making
grape sugar into table sugar Nor is
grape sugar the only popularity unfa
miliar variety of this very everyday
substance that receives the attention
of the modern sugar expert, for sugar
is almost as widely distributed as a
we'll known poet once declared Ser
mons to be. But ordinary sugar, ever
since it was introduced into continental
Europe by cruSading knights who thus
returned sweetly if not always tri-
umphantly from their campaigns in
the East, has had the center of the
table; the other varieties are known
chiefly TO the chemists who have since
discovered them and the manufacture
ers who use them in an almost count
less number of modern industrial pro-
ceSseS. Naturally the members of the
medical profession made that the first
scientific body to interest itself in
studying sugar, and some very curious
ideas they originally evolved concern
ing 1t.
Not Always Fattening.
Coarse sugar. said DR.. Thomas
Short, who wrote his Discourse on
Sugar" together with some plain and
Useful Rules for Gouty People, only
$50 years ago, affords much oil to the
adipose vessels; in which with the ad-
hesion of it's fine earthly parts to the
sides of the vessels, makes it fitted fir
thin, meager, unhealthy, or hectically
disposed habits.
choleric constitutions; for being too slim
ulating, it increases the motion of the
fluids; its salts wear the insides of the
vessels, and dry the body; for this reason
should meager persons take care how they
make too free with it,
Little did Dr.. Thomas Short realize
that there would be found special kinds
of sugar especially adapted to "meager
persons" or that the article, in one form
or another, would be produced not only
from sugar cane, but from beets, pars-
dates, grapes, honey, maize, melons, ma
pie, palm, pine, plums, potatoes, rho
dodendrons, milk, and various other
sources-to say nothing of wood sawdust
and old linen. OF all these sources COM
paratively few can yet be utilized success
fully, and for commercial purposes ordi-
nary sugar is made only from sugar cane
and beets; milk sugar, from milk; grape
sugar and malt sugar, from potatoes and
grains, chiefly corn maple sugar, of
t course Sc from the maple; date sugar from
quite largely imported from China until
recently. from palm OIL
White Sugar Sweetest.
Ordinary sugar as we all know, is used
primarily for sweetening. The otltr
sugars are chiefly valuable for their food
properties as well as their varying power
to make life sWeeter than it would be
otherwise. Milk sugar, for example, is
hardly sweet at all, while ordinary brown
sugar apparently tastes sweeter than any
other variety. Not long ago, indeed, there
was little revolution in Germany and
the German housewives even declared
that the German scientists knew very
little about sugar because forsooth did
they not say that white sugar was sweet
est when anybody win a tongue knew
that brown sugar was sweeter. Perfect
idiots, these scientists! Whereupon the
scientists proved that the presence of i'm
DuritieS-Say SALT or quinine or any other
entity sweeter than before they were
added. Hygienically considered, more
over, sugar stands in the same relation
to most other food substances that a dol
lar bill stands to a bank check; it is ready
currency, so to speak, and goes into i'm
mediate circulation. The needs of the
body Immediately absorb all of it that
they require and anybody who has eaten
too much candy knows the cloved sensa-
ton which is the stomach's way of saying
that it has all the sugar that it can use at
present.
Malt sugar and grape sugar-the chem
ist call them maltese and dextrose-are
therefore the most vital items in the maxi
Ing OF !, health 7;to foods and in the production
economically because they develop natur-
ally ally in the series Of chemical operations
in which they are used. They don't have
to be made separately and put in with a
spoon. In common glucose, for example
a syrup extracted from corn and used
very largely. in the manufacture of con-
fectionery, jellies. and soda fountain
syrups, there is about 40 per cent of NAL
tose and the. expense of extracting it