BAKED BEANS: 
A 
Fftedical Popen, 
BY 
EPHRAIM CUTTER, A.M., M.D., Harv. et Univ. Penn., 
Associate Mem.. Philosophical Society of Great Britain; Corresponding Mem. 
Soc. Beige de Microscopie; Honorary Mem. H. H. S. Med. Soc., California 
S. Med. Soc. and Gynecological Soc. of Boston; Mem. Cotn. for 
Revising U. S. P., i860, Am. Med Ass’n; Mass. Med. Soc., 
Com. One Hundred, Mass. Sold. Fund, 1861; A KE, <?, 
1852, and Am. Soc. Microscopists; Author of 
Boylston Prize Essay, 1857. 
REPRINTED FROM ALBANY MEDICAL ANNALS. 
ALBANY, N. Y.: 
Burdick & Taylor, Printers, 4S1 Broadway. 
18S7. BAKED BEANS: 
A 
Paper, 
BY 
EPHRAIM CUTTER, A.M., M.I)., Harv. et Univ. Penn., 
Associate Mem. Philosophical Society of Great Britain; Corresponding Mem. 
Soc. Beige de Microscopie; Honorary Mem. N. H. S. Med. Soc., California 
S. Med. Soc. and Gynecological Soc. of Boston; Mem. Com. for 
Revising U. S. P., i860, Am. Med. Ass’n; Mass. Med. Soc., 
Com. One Hundred, Mass. Sold. Fund, 1861; A KE, <P, 
1852, and Am. Soc. Microscopists; Author of 
Boy Is ton Prize Essay, 1857. 
REPRINTED FROM ALBANY MEDICAL ANNALS. 
ALBANY, N. Y.: 
Burdick & Taylor, Printers, 481 Broadway. 
1887. BAKED BEANS: 
A Serio-H umorous Medical Paper. 
EPHRAIM CUTTER, M.D., NEW YORK CITY. 
Ethics, Chernies, Physiologies, Morphologies, Pathologies and 
Culinary Ethics. 
It is curious that the term “ Beans ” is a standard of ethical 
knowledge. For example, I have known boys and men to say 
of a person, most likely a new-comer who proved to be unusu- 
ally ignorant of the local manners and customs of their neigh- 
borhood, in a sneering way, “ That fellow don’t know beans.” 
This means that the person in question was almost non com- 
pos. Why intellectual, mental and moral capacity should be 
connected with beans is difficult to explain, as a good many other 
customs are. It is more difficult to explain why the same article 
of food has been humorously connected with aesthetic culture, 
since the science of aesthetics deals with sight and sound only ; 
there seems no reason why it should not include taste, because 
mankind, as far as possible, selects food by the pleasurable taste of 
the article in question, and because the delight and pleasure found 
in food comes closer to life than music and the fine arts. People 
can live without music, sculptures and paintings, but not 
without eating. Surely all food should be judged not on the 
ground of tasting good, looking good, smelling good, or because 
it is an ethical food (that is, a conventional food for a certain 
locality, class or race of people). It is wise to select food on 
these grounds, but not on these alone; because what is sweet to 
the taste, savory in smell, beautiful in looks and an ethical food 
may not contain— 4 
(a.) Chemical elements enough for a good food. 
(b.) Its form (morphological) elements may be such as to 
resist more or less thoroughly the digestion, and thus not be a 
good 
(c.) Physiological food, but be 
(d.) A pathological food, or one which causes, sooner or later, 
chronic or acute diseases. 
Can the average man who is very hungry for food be attracted 
by the delights of the eye or ear? To be sure, these are found 
in a first-class banquet, in order to make the pleasures of the oc- 
casion complete. The arts of architects, painters, florists, up- 
holsters, drapers, gold, silver and iron smiths, potters, glass work- 
ers, tailors, dressmakers, hair-dressers, perfumers, jewelers, sculp- 
tors, musicians, and after-dinner speakers are added to the arts 
of confectioners, caterers, cooks and waiters, to charm the eyes, 
ears, tastes and olfactory nerves of the guests; and when all these 
are harmoniously and fittingly combined, the result is what 
may be termed a supreme effort to gratify the love of the beau- 
tiful and to make the occasion memorable because the bodies 
and souls of the guests have been so pleasantly influenced from 
so many different points of aesthetic contact. 
It must be admitted that eaters of “Baked Beans” (when well 
cooked) get a pleasure without the above additional attractions. 
Culture has been mentioned in connection with this article of 
diet. It goes as a jest that the modern Athens is indebted to 
baked beans for its high intellectual standing !—perhaps on the 
ground that beans are rich in phosphoric acid and that the same 
element is found in nerve tissues. The more highly organized 
the nerve tissues, the better brain-work will they produce. Be 
this as it may, we cannot go quite so far as the opinion we heard 
expressed lately, that “this article of New England diet may 
explain the abundant crop of ‘ isms ’ and novel ideas in social and 
political economy, theology and mechanics; that were a high wall 
built up round about New England to shut out the world, the 
inhabitants would perish from their own conflicts of new ideas and 
the baneful effects of mal-nutrition ; that emigration has been a 
conservant power, breaking up old habits of living and hence intro- 
ducing a closer adaptation to the ordinary intellect and body.” 
We quote this not in approval, but to show how this class of 
people appears to an outside thinker who does not follow the 
same lines of diet as to legumes. 5 
However, it must be said that canned beans are shipped to 
all quarters and Boston baked beans are advertised freely, show- 
ing that emigration does not kill the love of them. A traveler 
all over the Union remarked in the cars, a short time since, that 
wherever he goes in Kansas, Nebraska, Idaho, Dakota, etc., and 
finds a Boston lady keeping house, he was sure to find baked 
beans prepared in the conventional style. During the war, in 
1861, the New England troops were not satisfied until baked 
beans were put on the army ration. No aesthetics in baked beans! 
They are liked because they excite pleasure in eating. The 
eaters anticipate their pleasure, and make more talk about them 
than of any other article of food. It is doubtful if any amount 
of persuasion could induce them to give up beans, even if proved 
to be deleterious, an exciting cause of consumption, and the dis- 
eases that arise from imperfect digestion. Indeed, if the gen- 
tleman who expressed the opinion above quoted were to take it 
“ down east,” he would have a hard time, from the very fact that 
he would touch a tender chord. To show the truth of this posi- 
tion the following is quoted from the Boston Commercial Bul- 
letin, February 12, 1887, from an article entitled “Forefather’s 
Food—Poetry and Pork”: “Nine (9) million pounds of canned 
baked beans annually consumed in this country, of which Boston 
packs 70 per cent.” 
The following is a sample of baked beans poetry, four verses 
of which are from the Baltimore Weekly Magazine, October 13, 
1818, and the fifth verse added by a Chicago daily of late date: 
BAKED BEANS. 
Oh! how my heart yearns for my own native land, 
Where potatoes, and squashes, and cucumbers grow; 
Where cheer and good welcome are always at hand, 
And custards and pumpkin pies smoke in a row; 
Where pudding the visage of hunger serenes, 
And, what is far dearer, the pot of baked beans. 
Let Maryland boast of her dainties profuse, 
Her large watermelons and cantaloupes fine, 
Her turtle, and oysters, and terrapin stews, 
And soft crabs, high zested with brandy and wine; 
Ah! never my heart from my native land weans, 
When smokes on the table the pot of baked beans. 6 
The pot of baked beans! With what pleasure I saw it, 
Well season’d, well pork’d, by some rosy-faced dame; 
And when from the glowing hot oven she’d draw it, 
Well crisp’d and well brown’d to the table it came. 
O give me my country, the land of my teens, 
Of the dark Indian pudding and pot of baked beans. 
The pot of baked beans! Ah! the muse is too frail 
Its taste to descant on, its virtue to tell; 
But look at the sons of New England so hale, 
And her daughters so rosy—’twill teach thee full well. 
Like me it will teach thee to sigh for the means 
Of health and—oh 1 rapture 1—the pot of baked beans. 
A Yankee. 
Poor “ Yankee!” You lived half a century too soon, 
And pined in your loneliness for the loved dish; 
To-day, any grocer would sing a new tune, 
And give you the article just as you’d wish; 
And you every day could revive youthful scenes 
With Spriggins and Company’s Boston Baked Beans. 
“Canned beans are cooked as follows: After soaking and 
dosing with molasses and three or four ounces of best salt pork, 
they are sealed in a tin can ; then heated to 250°-260° Fahren- 
renheit in a closed steam retort. When removed the cans are 
pierced to let out the steam and afterwards resealed.” 
This mode is thought to be very effective, and a morphologi- 
cal examination by the writer shows the following: 
Sample I. Boston Baked Beans, patented August 7, 1877, put 
up and warranted by the Grocers’ Packing Company. The 
starch grains retained their form and polarized light as much as 
the sac of cellulose that contained them. Hence it is doubtful 
whether this mode of cooking is as effective as the old-fashioned 
way. These beans were put into a Chamberlain steamer and 
steamed for half an hour. The result was that the starch grains 
ceased to polarize light, but their forms were not destroyed. 
Sample II. Packed by the Oneida Community, New York. 
Under microscope, the starch gx-ains did not polarize the light 
and were distinct in form, though slightly changed, showing a 
better cooking than in Sample I. 
Sample III. Riverside Farm Baked Beans, Portland, Me. 
“Every can guaranteed.” Under microscope, starch grains 
polarize light and retain their raw form. I should advise more 
cooking for this brand. 7 
The dangers of improperly prepared beans are touchingly set 
set forth in the following contribution to baked beans literature 
in a California journal (see Boston Commercial Bulletin, Feb- 
ruary 12, 1887): 
BOSTON BAKED BEANS. 
The boy stood at the kitchen fire, 
Upon it was a kettle, 
Within its spacious, hollow sphere 
A can of bright, white metal. 
The can contained two pounds of beans, 
The “ What-you may-call-it ” brand ; 
The poorest, meanest kind of beans 
That’s in the market canned. 
His father called, he could not go, 
His face grew brighter still, 
He watched the steam with happiness, 
And never thought of ill. 
There came a burst of thunder sound— 
The boy—oh ! where was he ? 
Ask of the steam that fragments left 
Wherever one could see. 
The water, kettle, boy and can 
Of beans, the floor bestrew. 
But when I tell the cause of this 
You’ll say he got his due. 
The beans were cheap and poorly canned, 
The can with gas was filled ; 
For fermentation had set in, 
By which the boy was killed. 
And so the boy has disappeared, 
But in one sense remains, 
And leaves a moral—“ Use a brand 
Of which no one complains.” 
This is more applicable when it is remembered how remark- 
ably fond children are of this dish. 
The English never eat beans, and call them “ horse food.” 
Given a food that is good for man, (1) aesthetically, (2) chemi- 
cally, (3) morphologically, and (4) physiologically, there is dan- 
ger of its being a bad food unless it is properly cooked. 
This remark introduces a fact of incalculable moment in our 
day and generation — that the culinary department of life’s 8 
work is one which may be made an engine of life or death. 
The difficulties which now trouble the kitchen, and the painful 
stories of girls and women starving over needle-work, in serving 
counters and other departments of ill-paid labor, calling on our 
compassion (for some find the path to moral ruin while at the 
same time there are plenty of kitchens calling for help), show 
the need of impressing the fact that kitchens are a greater source 
of power than the thoughtless cooks dream of. 
Who are cooks? Our mothers, grandmothers and servant 
girls. Why should cookery be thought drudgery ? It is one of 
the misnomers of Satan and designed to injure mankind. Any 
honorable labor which is necessary to the existence of the human 
race should not be deemed drudgery. Certainly cooking is essen- 
tial to human existence, and hence a cook is not a drudge; rather, 
a cook is like air—a life supporter. Is there dishonor in this 
employment ? 
Again, a practical and indispensable acquaintance with subjects 
of the highest importance, which involve topics that have chal- 
lenged the best intellectual talents of the savants of all ages, cer- 
tainly is compatible with the highest dignity and grandeur that 
a human being can attain to. 
If we refer to the physics and chemics of heat in cooking, we 
have such a subject, containing intricate, abstruse and hidden 
phenomena which have defied the scientific world. Count Rum- 
lord’s fame comes from having done the most of any in this 
direction. He will be remembered not because he was a count, 
wealthy, clad in fine raiment, the pet of the nations, the associate 
of kings—although these things are not to be despised—but as 
the discoverer and demonstrator that heat is a form of motion, 
equally convertible. Besides, he was a cook. He did not dignify 
the office of cook ; it dignified him; indeed, his culture was an 
ornament to his cooking. Every cook who does good work is in 
the same company as Rumford. Perhaps the greatest satisfac- 
tion one can take in life is the fact of having done something for 
somebody which has made him happy or done good to his 
physical existence by keeping his body in good condition so 
that he may in time do good to others. If cooks did but know 
it, they can take this satisfaction every time they broil a steak 
properly, make good bread, tea, coffee, bake beans rightly, etc. 
They can feel that their services are of positive value, whether 
recognized or not, and entitle them to self-respect three times a 9 
day. Away, then, with the false notion that cooking is worse 
labor and more degrading than sewing and clerking on starva- 
tion wages ! I once knew a man who kept a restaurant in Boston 
who retired wealthy because he made a specialty of baked beans 
properly cooked. Now, this man’s success in life shows that the 
good quality of the cooking pays well. The same is true of 
other articles of diet. The Parker House at Boston was built up 
on the good quality of the bread, also the house of Smith and 
McNeil of this city, which gives ten thousand (10,000) meals a 
day because of good cooking. This firm cooks potatoes so that 
the starch is changed into glucose, as I have proved by chemical 
tests. 
The connection of food with aesthetics may seem to some far- 
fetched, but I assert that while a man’s bowels wrestle in intes- 
tinal conflicts with illy or improperly cooked food he cannot be 
very aesthetic as to music and painting, from the physical impos- 
sibility of having his nervous system engaged in two such 
works; i. e., first, difficult digestion, and second, aesthetic excite- 
ment. For a time the cerebral nerve centres might ignore the 
intestinal nerve centres, but as life can go on without cerebra- 
tion and cannot go on without digestion, so the latter will 
triumph and claim attention, provided the cause (illy-digesting 
food) is not removed. On the other hand, a man kept warm 
with a stomach filled with a good, well-cooked dinner, will be 
an agreeable husband (so I have heard a good housewife say), 
and is in a condition to take delight in a concert room, or in a 
picture gallery, or in intellectual enjoyment. 
Chemics. 
The following tables are from Johnson’s “How Crops Grow,” 
O. Judd & Co., New York, 1881: 
Field Beans. 
TABLE I. 
Number of analyses 6 
Per cent, of ash 3.45 
Potash 40.50 
Soda .. 1.20 
Magnesia 6.70 
Lime 5.20 
Phosphoric acid 39.20 
Sulphuric acid 3.10 
Silica 1.20 
Chlorine 2.90 10 
Garden Beans. 
Number of analyses 9 
Per cent, of ash 3 06 
Polash 44 \ 
So(ia 2^90 
Magnesia 7 50 
Lime 7.70 
Phosphoric acid 30.40 
Sulphuric acid 3.80 
Silica o!80 
Chlorine 0.90 
Composition, Giving the Avekage Quantity of Water, Sulphur, 
Ash and Ash Ingredients in 1,000 Parts of Fresh or Air-Dry 
Substance of Seed Beans (Phaseolus Vulgaris), Compared with 
Wheat, by Prof. Wolff. 
TABLE II. 
Wheat. 
Field Beans. 
Garden Beans. 
Water 
141.00 
148 00 
Ash 
29.60 
26.10 
Potash , 
12.00 
11.05 
Soda 
.04 
.08 
Magnesia 
... . 2.20 
2.00 
2.00 
Lime 
60 
1.50 
2.00 
Phosphoric acid 
8.20 
11 60 
7.90 
Sulphuric acid 
40 
1.50 
1.40 
Silica 
80 
0.40 
Chlorine 
.80 
.30 
Sulphur 
1.50 
2.80 
2.50 
A glance at the analysis of wheat, which is par excellence a 
good food for man, which has stood the test of ages, and which 
is called one of the royal grains, shows that “beans” are a good 
food chemically, containing more mineral matter, and hence 
admirable from this standpoint of view as a food for the solid 
tissues, teeth, hair, bones, corneas, nails and epidermis. 
But on this view alone we should not estimate the value of 
beans as food, any more than from the msthetic point of view. 
One could get these chemicals, isolated in these proportions, and 
eat them, but it would not necessarily follow that the human 
system would assimilate them, even if they did not prove poison- 
ous and destructive to life. As the mineral food of plants must 
be in soluble and assimilable forms, combined with carbon, 
hydrogen and oxygen—that is, in properly prepared manures 
(which are mainly soluble forms of mineral food), so must these 
same mineral and organic food-elements be prepared for man in 
morphological or form-elements which are so disposed and 
arranged as to be easily digestible—that is, easily broken down 
by the human digestive organs and easily assimilable. For if 
the tissues of the “beans,” for example, are constructed to resist 
outside attacks, somewhat like an iron-clad, it is evident that no 11 
amount of chemical excellence will make them a first-class food 
worthy of the high estimates placed on them in some quarters. 
This introduces the next point of view to take in testing a food, 
to wit: 
The Morphologic. 
Taking the bean botanically, it is the seed of the phaseolus 
species of the leguminose family. The seed is made of the germ 
and two lobes, called cotyledons, which are seed leaves loaded 
with starch to serve as food for the germ and for animals. The 
points of interest are : 
The seed is covered with a thick skin or envelope, which 
is made up of a set of beautiful prismatic crystal-like shapes of 
Morphology of Beans. 
End and side views of the prisms of cellulose that make up the skin of the 
common white hean. Baked, but not thoroughly cooked. 
Fig. 1. 
cellulose placed side by side longitudinally, so that these ends 
make the outside and inside surfaces of the skin or envelope and 
appear very much like the tops of the Giant’s Causeway crystals 
of trap-rock. See Fig. 1. The group to the right shows three 
or four rows of these cellulose bodies. They are displaced by 
the pressure of the cover and slide and appear to be end to end. 
In the middle of each prism is an hour-glass contraction which 
is in the central axis and is surrounded with clear cellulose 
which fills out the contour. To the left, two groups of the face 
of the outer bean-membrane are seen showing the prism ends in 
contact. The crystal-elements of the membrane are quite insolu- 
ble, polarize light, and resist the digestive influences of the 
alimentary canal. They are found in large quantities in the ex- 
crement of bean-eaters, and furnish a sure proof, when found, that 12 
beans or peas entered into the diet of the case under examination. 
In Fig. 5 are seen seven of these prisms which came from Lima 
beans ; here the lateral surfaces are narrowed, leaving tack-like 
heads of irregular shapes at both ends. Of course, the membrane 
thus made cannot have the strength of the membrane ol the com- 
mon white bean, as the prisms do not touch along their sides. 
The epithelia of the common bean are seen in Fig. 3, in the left 
lower quarter of field ; while the epithelia of the Lima bean are 
seen in Fig. 2, left group. It is well to note the remarkable 
interdigitations of these epithelia. When interlocked, unsoftened 
and unseparated by cooking, they must hold together the parts 
over which they are spread with great firmness. Indeed, if beans 
Pavement epithelia of Lima bean (boiled), with curious dictations, 
Cells filled with coloring matter (may be legumen). 
Fig. 2. 
uncooked sojourn in the meatus of the ear, in the nostril, or in the 
alimentary canal, they remain unchanged more or less, for a time, 
and are voided almost in the same condition as when they en- 
tered. No sane person would think of eating mature dry beans 
for food. The toughness, thickness and peculiar structure of the 
envelope of the bean make it such a strong obstacle to digestion 
and assimilation. 
The Substance of the Bean 
is made up of starch grains, connective tissue, spiral vascular 
tissue, etc., etc. 
The starch is not peculiar in its appearance and is readily 
recognized. In a section of an uncooked bean, the starch grains 13 
appear in globular masses of varying sizes, filling up, apparently, 
the meshes of the connective fibrous tissue, which is quite thick, 
fibrous, homogeneous, polarizes light, and is probably cellulose or 
woolly fibre, very resistant to outside influences of any kind 
(see Fig. 4). In a section of raw Lima bean, the meshes appear as 
in one continuous net-work, making areolae; but when cooked by 
baking or boiling, there is a great change wrought which is sur- 
prising, for the starch grains are found to be contained in sacs 
Fig. 3. 
Common small white bean baked, not thoroughly cooked; kept several days. 
Bacteria abundant. Prism elements of skin. Digitate epithelia. 
Two parenchymatous beans’ sacs; one ruptured and 
discharging starch grains, the other whole. 
of thick cellulose which are distinct from each other and are of 
various sizes, shapes and contours, containing a variable number 
of starch grains (see Figs. 3 and 5). They are globular, pyriform, 
elongated, compressed, apparently triangular, sometimes remind- 
ing of difflugia cratera, sometimes of pelomyxoe, and so on, but 
all covered with a transparent envelope or sac of cellulose 
which looks like the clear margin of gemiasma verdans, rubra, 
and plumba, found in malaria. The thickness of this coat is 14 
worth attention. Taking an average sac, I found it measured 
8.5 mm., while the thickness of the clear investing sac measured 
0.5 mm., so that the proportion for the case measured would be 
8.5 to 0.5, one-seventeenth of the whole diameter ior the invest- 
ing sac. Or, to put it differently, if the sac were an egg two inches 
long and had a proportionately thick shell, it would be one-quarter 
of an inch thick, which certainly would be an extrardinary thick- 
ness for a hen’s egg and make it tougher than an ostrich’s egg, 
one of which exploded at the Peabody Museum, New Haven, the 
other day, from the pressure of internal gases and came near 
killing the scientific gentleman who was studying it. It is prob- 
able that it takes a great force to explode one of these sacs of 
Haw Lima bean. Cross section, showing starch grains enclosed in meshes of 
connective fibrous tissue. (Compare with Fig. 5.) 
Fig. 4. 
baked beans (see Fig. 3). The fact that so few of the sacs are 
found ruptured after cooking and after migrating through the 
alimentary canal shows a great power of resistance to digestive 
agencies. In Fig. 3 the beans are not thoroughly cooked. This 
diagnosis was based on the following: 
1. Action of polarized light. 
2. Condition ol the starch contained within the sacs. 
First, Polarized Light.—On the uncooked starch grains, polar- 
ized light sets with great beauty, but when the starch is cooked, 
polarized light has no action; hence a good test of cooking is by 
polarized light. As the beans’ starch grains are cooked they 
polarize light less and less, and when cooked (to repeat) polarize 15 
it not at all; so one can judge at once, as to whether beans are 
cooked or not, by polarized light. The purple selenite stage slip 
is the best. The writer discovered this about ten years ago and 
thinks he has the priority. However, this has been found so 
good a practical test that he thinks it must be adopted in the 
future. 
Second, Condition of the Bean Starch- Grains.—Before cooking 
they are clean cut, distinct; after thorough cooking they 
Fig. 5. 
Boiled Lima bean. Pour sacs unbroken, contents partially disorganized. One 
digitate epithelium. Group of five skin elements with tack-heads in con- 
tact, while the bodies are apart, thus making a much weaker membrane 
than that of the common white bean (see Pig. 1). Opposite are two skin 
form elements more highly magnified. Lima bean better than the other, 
because more easily cooked. (See Pig. 4 for raw Lima bean, to compare.) 
lose their outlines and forms, blend into one homogeneous 
mass, that is granular, devoid of structure, sometimes striated in 
coils, looking much like the solid extract of an herb as found in 
pharmacy, only not so deeply colored. The amount of disinte- 
gration, breaking down and homogeneousness constitutes, in my 
opinion, a very good test for the thorough cooking of baked 
beans. 16 
(see Fig. 5) serves to coagulate the protoplasm into a nucleus leav- 
ing a clear ground work about it ; the grains are swelled and dis- 
tributed more than in baking. These morphological changes are 
easy to study. A good one-quarter-inch objective, a two-inch 
eye-piece, with a slide, cover, stand and tooth-pick, are means 
ample enough to verify these statements from off one’s own 
table. With the tooth-pick small portions of the baked beans 
can be transferred to the slide, a little water and manipulation 
with the cover will distribute the specimen into an even field, and 
the slide is ready for the microscope. Those who have a polar- 
izing apparatus can test the specimen with it. The writer hopes 
that more attention will be paid to the morphology of food in 
time to come ; for certainly it furnishes a field of study always 
present, easy to get at, and of vital importance to the human race 
in more points than the sesthetic one. This leads to the 
Boiling the Beans 
Physiologic View. 
Baked Beans in Relation to the Functions of Digestion and 
Assimilation. 
(Provided they are in good order and thoroughly cooked, so as 
to furnish the simplest problem of solution by the functions 
named; provided the cellulose structures are softened, macerated 
and separated; provided the salivary liquids are thoroughly 
mixed in the mouth and the beans thoroughly ground up by the 
teeth.) 
In the stomach the beans digest little; in the intestines the 
bile, the pancreatic and intestinal fluids act on the starch, 
complete the changes already begun by the cooking, the mas- 
tication and the gastric juice, and turn it into glucose, in which 
soluble condition it is taken up into the portal circulation and 
transmitted to the liver. 
The other elements of the beans that are made soluble are 
also absorbed into the system, and it is fed and warmed by the 
beans. The longer this food stays in the stomach the more it 
ferments. For it must be remembered that the alimentary 
canal is a great reservoir of fermentative vegetations, as a rule, 
so that sedentary persons have more trouble with this article of 
food. Persons who live out of doors and who move about 
actively and work hard, digest vegetable foods better than the 
sedentary, as the food is accelerated in its passage through the 17 
alimentary canal and the undigested remainder has less time in 
which to ferment. Hence, when we hear of a Maine lumberman 
thriving on baked beans, which frozen solid by the barrel and 
cut out with axes, are then cooked, we lay the benefit to the 
fresh air of the woods and the violent exercise. 
From what has been said it must be admitted that baked 
beans are not easy to digest, and that there is good reason 
for the unusual amount of intestinal gases that accompany 
their digestion. This gas is usually carbonic acid; it is formed 
inside the bean sacs, and they must explode like microscopic 
dynamite bombs in the intestines! (See Fig. 3.) If we con- 
sider that nerve force is the agent by which digestion is regu- 
lated, if not produced, other things being equal, it takes more 
nerve energy to digest baked beans than some other kinds of 
food, and, of course, there is less energy left to run the rest of 
the economy in the departments where nerve force predomi- 
nates, and hence the cerebral centres cannot act with that effi- 
ciency and energy that they could if the system was fed on a 
food that took less nerve force to digest it. To be sure, allow- 
ance must be made for differences in individuals in the power of 
digesting baked beans and other articles of food. Some will 
digest their meals when others cannot, because their organs are 
in remarkably good condition to do their work; but aside from 
this, it is not profitable to abuse a good digestion; sometime 
there will be a break-down. 
Pathologics. 
Baked Beans as a Cause of Disease. 
Some years ago, Dr. J. H. Salisbury (Albany Medical College, 
’50) made some unique but most valuable experiments as to 
baked beans. He put himself and six strong, healthy labor- 
ing men on an exclusive diet of baked beans, coffee and 
milk. They were sedentary, save that in the morning and 
evening they all marched out on the street in military order 
for exercise. Almost immediately there was diarrhoea, fol- 
lowed in all the cases (in about fourteen days) by con- 
sumption of the bowels. If any one doubts this, he is asked 
to live on the same diet exclusively for the same time and 
report results, which were so uniform in the above cases that 
there is no hesitation in predicting like issues. This may be 
called too severe treatment of any food, and that no food would 18 
stand such a test, because so unnatural. Dr. Salisbury found that 
lean beef also would stand all the test of a healthy food, hence 
its adoption as a basis for his treatment of disease. It is to be 
hoped that Dr. S. will publish the full accounts of his expe- 
riences for the benefit of the human race, but until then it may 
be remarked here that he found this diarrhoea was caused by the 
alcoholic fermentation of the baked beans, producing alcohol, 
carbonic acid and vinegar. The alcohol showed itself by the 
fuddling of the men, while it did good by arresting for the time 
the active process of the fermentation. The results of the action 
of the alcohol were: 
1. Distention of the bowels by gas. 
2. Paralyzing them by direct contact. 
3. Paralyzing the epithelia of the mucous membrane, making 
them, as it were, drunk, causing a thickened catarrhal condition, 
hence the profuse liquid discharges, and later on some sulphur- 
etted hydrogen. 
He speaks of the sacs described above as bursting with 
fermentation, thus paralleling that explosion of the ostrich’s 
egg. He said if he continued the diet of beans with the 
men some of them would have had consumption of the lungs, 
and he regarded a diet of baked beans as one of the most favor- 
able for the production of consumption. He has told me for 
years that this article of diet was no doubt one cause of the 
prevalence of consumption in New England. These views should 
command respect, as they are based on food experiments (with 
men) the range, extent and thoroughness of which have never 
yet been equaled. The writer’s experience with baked beans, 
based on a long study of the morphology of faeces, goes to sus- 
tain the positions of Dr. Salisbury. 
It is always possible to detect the eating of baked beans 
by a microscopical examination of the forms found in the 
faeces of the eater. The beautiful cellulose prisms or double 
tack-headed elements of the outer membrane of the bean or 
pea will tell the tale, while an abundance of the sacs filled 
with starch grains, sure to be found, will testify to the 
same thing. At one time the writer verified this in his own 
person, and was astonished at the quantity of undigested 
beans and other food that ran the gauntlet of an alimentary 
canal which was called healthy. Once the writer visited the 
Massachusetts State Prison at Concord (before it was used as a 19 
reformatory). Passing by the latrine, he saw a pile of baked 
beans large enough to load a horse-cart, most of which had 
passed through the digestive organs of the prisoners. Cer- 
tainly if this exhibition meant anything, it showed that these 
baked beans are a poor prison ration, I think it would be more 
rational to feed the beans to animals whose organs are better 
adapted to digest them than man’s, and, if need be, let man eat 
the animals. If the sacs of the bean-grains could be ruptured 
before eating, considerable objection would be removed. They 
might be crushed between rollers, or pounded in a mortar, or 
mashed like potatoes. If bean-eaters would take time to thor- 
oughly cook and chew them, the situation would be improved. 
But probably one great popular recommendation of baked beans 
is their smallness, so that they are swallowed whole, easily, and 
thus save time in eating. If man had the gizzard of fowls, or five 
stomachs like bovines, this might answer; but it seems to me we 
do ourselves harm in the end by imperfect mastication, which 
fails to crush the bean-sacs and mix the juices of the mouth with 
the starch of the bean, and so prepare it for the digestive pro- 
cesses it should undergo; for if they are not prepared, a good 
portion is wasted, as the Concord latrine witnessed. 
Culinary Ethics. 
Importance of Cooking. 
The writer has no idea of influencing the abandonment of 
baked beans as food, but he would like to put in a plea for bet-* 
ter cooking. It goes without saying that the average cooking 
is bad. It is no wonder, for this vital matter is often put in the 
hands of the humblest and most unintelligent members of the 
household, whose views of doing things are so fixed, conven- 
tional and authoritative that they may be in truth termed 
“queens” of the kitchen. In the days when mothers and grand- 
mothers did the cooking, there was a better chance for good 
results. Still, as we now know the peculiar physical conditions 
to be overcome, perhaps the queens of the parlor may join 
the battle for good cooking, as it is a vital battle. Good 
cooking means health and life, and bad cooking means dis- 
ease and death. I hope it will become fashionable for families 
to cultivate the microscope as they do the piano; then there will 
be a chance to spread knowledge which will protect the rights 
of households. I do not know why good cooking is not as inal- 20 
ienable a right as any named in the Declaration of Independ- 
ence. Why should we go through life with our intestines 
waging an unequal warfare with any food, baked beans for 
example, simply because we are too ignorant or inactive to 
demand that they shall be cooked after a process like the fol- 
lowing ? 
1st. Soak a quart of beans over night in two quarts of cold 
water. 
2d. In the morning turn off the water, add fresh water and 
boil them till the membranes begin to separate ; turn off the 
water. 
3d. Put the beans in a baking pot, with half a pound of 
salt pork buried in the beans, add two tablespoonfuls of molasses, 
and cover the whole with water. Bake in a slow oven all day; a 
baker’s oven is best. Watch the beans, and if they become too dry 
add more water. When thoroughly cooked it will be known by 
the softness of the beans in the mouth between the teeth, by the 
taste, and by the microscope showing the starch grains broken up 
and mixed in one homogeneous mass that will not polarize light 
with a selenite plate. 
4th. Take time to eat and chew thoroughly. 
5th, After eating, go out in the open air and walk or work. 
Do not go to church right after eating baked beans; they will 
stay in the stomach and their indigestion will do much towards 
spoiling the enjoyment of the exercises there. Dyspepsia and 
religion do not go together well, but good digestion and holiness 
are twins. Holiness, health, whole and hale, come from the 
same root. A holy man is a healthy, whole man, with all the 
functions in good order and no dyspepsia. Dyspepsia is a physio- 
logical sin. 
1730 Broadway, March 1, 1887.