IMPROVEMENTS IN PRESERVING ANIMAL OR VEGETABLE MATTERS
Year: 1861

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Abraham Gerard Brade at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
7th March 1861.-Partly a communication from Mr. G. Leuchs,
residing at Nuremberg, Bavaria.
I, ABRAHAM GERARD BRADE, of Paris, France, Civil Engineer,, do hereby
declare the nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN PRESERVING
ANIMAL OR VEGETABLE MATTERS;" the same is the result partly of a communication
made to me by Mr. G. Leuchs, a person residing at Nuremberg, Bavaria, and
partly the result of Invention and discovery made by me, to be as follows:-
These improvements relate to a new mode of preserving any description
of animal or vegetable matters, but particularly to the preserving of meat, fish,
or other eatables, and consist in depriving the matters to be preserved of
a portion of the water they contain by the application of what is called in
natural philosophy the force of endosmosis and exosmosis, or by putting them
in direct contact with suitable solutions or other suitable materials which will
rapidly abstract the required portion of water from the matters to be preserved.
and further keeping the said matters thus partly dishydrated sufficiently excluded.
from direct contact with the atmospheric air.
For this purpose the animal or vegetable matters to be preserved are kept.
immersed for some hours in a sufficiently thick suitably gummy, slimy, or
viscous solution, or in any other suitable substances containing less water than
the matters to be preserved according to the length of time of iminersion, and

page_text: the nature of the solution, and the matters to be preserved; these latter will part
with a more or less greater portion of the water they contain, and this latter be
given off to the solution or other water absorbing medium made use of, the
matters to be preserved are then brought into another thicker solution wherein
they must be kept entirely submerged so as to prevent the atmospheric air
from acting on them.
In practice for performing the first part of the process viz., the partial dis-
hydrating of the matters to be preserved, I make use of suitable viscous, slimy,
or clammy solutions, such, for instance, as those of gum senegal or other suitable
gums, of starch, dextrine, suitable decoctions of seeds, roots, lichens, or other
suitable plants, with or without the addition of suitable deliquescent salts or
other substances having a great water absorbent or an antiseptic power; I might
also use a solution of glycerine. Instead of partially dishydrating the matters
to be preserved by means of the said solutions the same might be done by
putting the matters in suitable water-absorbing substances, such, for instance, as
flour, starch, fine pulverized pumice stone or other suitable materials. The
solution in which the matters are finally to be preserved are excluded from the
action on them of the atmospheric air, must contain less water than that made
use of for partly. dishydrating them, and the matters must be kept entirely
submerged therein in any suitable vessel. If required a very thick vegetable,
gummy, or other suitable viscous solution may be made subservient at once
for partly dishydrating the matters to be preserved, and for further excluding
them from the immediate contact of the atmospheric air.