Text-book of meat hygiene : with special consideration to ante-mortem and post-mortem inspection of food-producing animals / by Medical counsellor Richard Edelmann ... with 157 illustrations and 8 colored plates. Authorized translation, with additions, by John R. Mohler ... and Adolph Eichhorn.

  • Edelmann, Richard (Richard Heinrich), 1861-
Date:
1908
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Text-book of meat hygiene : with special consideration to ante-mortem and post-mortem inspection of food-producing animals / by Medical counsellor Richard Edelmann ... with 157 illustrations and 8 colored plates. Authorized translation, with additions, by John R. Mohler ... and Adolph Eichhorn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    63/450 (page 37)
    The color of the muscles varies between a pale red, gray red, and dark red. Pale muscles occur in vertebrates, birds, and certain fish. Almost all the food animals show pale meat in certain ages of life (calves, young pigs), while in rabbits the meat remains pale all through life. Pale meat may also appear in some animals in certain groups of muscles alongside of dark-red muscles (hogs, birds). While the color of the muscles is somewhat influenced by the blood contents, yet it is not produced by the blood. The muscular coloring matter, which is identical with the hemoglobin, is rather bound to the myosin and develops in it. Further, the color of the meat is influenced by age, sex, race, work, feed- ing, etc. Especially in the ripening of meat a specific aroma is developed, which, as a result of the autolysation, manifests itself both by the odor and taste (M. Muller). Rigor mortis, which occurs after death, is probably the result of a coagulation of the myosin through the formation of lactic acid in the muscles. It may also be that it is affected by a particular “rigor mortis ferment ” It first affects the muscles of the head, and then spreads, in accordance to Nysten’s law, backward over the body. The time of the appearance of rigor mortis depends on the muscular activity before death; the stronger the activity of the muscles during life, the sooner rigor mortis sets in. In exhausted animals, rigor mortis, under certain conditions, appears immediately after death, the same as in tetanic muscles. Also the administration of certain medicines, according to Ostertag, favors the early appearance of rigor mortis (veratrin, alcohol, ether, etheric oils). In animals which were affected with severe febrile diseases, rigor mortis either does not manifest itself or only very slightly, being hardly noticeable. High atmospheric temperature favors the appearance of ligor mortis, while cold retards it. The occurrence of rigor mortis is in the same relation to its dissolution: the sooner rigor mortis sets in the quicker the muscles will relax again. Whether the dissolution of rigor mortis results from an increase of acid formation in the muscles, which again affects the solution of the myosin, or whether it is due to other influences, is still the subject of controversy. Von Forth, in his experiments of .extracting the muscle albumenoid bodies and ot their supposed relation to rigor mortis, obtained results which appear to exclude 1 iat rigor mortis is affected by an acid precipitation from the muscle albumen • but an attempt to deny that the degree of muscular acidity has no influence on the appear- ance of rigor mortis, would be too far reaching. In the post-mortem acid formation i certainly concerns lactic acid, as the setting free of inorganic phosphoric acid loes not take place. For the utilization of muscles for manufacturing sausage the act is noteworthy that muscles which still contain the animal heat and in which ngoi mortis has not appeared, may absorb up to 70 volume per cent, of water if they have been previously beaten, or if they were torn in shreds (Ostertag).