Since the onset and progression of modern day pharmaceutical industries and modern science…
Precious Stones by W. T. Fernie, M.D. 1907 pp. 185, 186, 187, 188, 189 ”…To quote relatively on this subject,—concerning Blood,—from our Animal Simples, 1890: “Nowa-days chemists prepare from the blood of healthy animals a ‘residuum rubrum,’ or ‘dried residue: which contains all its active principles still in their integrity. This is given beneficially in those disorders which require blood-salts, in their organic combination, as existing in fresh, sound, animal blood. A desiccated blood-powder is made, which gives to water a magnificent red colour. It has been well tried at the Children’s Hospital, in Paris, and has proved highly efficacious in cases where reconstituents were needed, such as iron, raw meat, and the animal phosphates. Monsieur le Bon reduced fresh bullock’s blood by simple evaporation to a solid, which when powdered was readily soluble in water.” Again," Quite recently," (as shown in the Lancet, November 28th, 1896) “the value of healthy ox-blood, both arterial, and venous, against crippling rheumatic diseases of the joints, has been conclusively proved. It is given on the sure principle of containing all those various animal organic substances which serve to maintain the sum total of health.” Furthermore, ox-blood is evaporated “in vacuo” by the manufacturing chemist, and its residuum supplied in condensed tabloids, as highly useful medicaments for the like essential purpose. In the Therapeutics of Sidney Ringer (a Standard Work, 1897) it is enjoined: "in cases of bloodlessness, wasting, and prostration, the fresh blood of animals, such as fowls, when mixed with warm wine, or milk-punch, warm lemonade, or warm milk, or coffee, and taken immediately, before it coagulates, is found to prove highly useful. It relieves the prostration (as after flooding), restores the bodily heat, revives the circulation; acting better, and more promptly—it is said,—than transfusion of blood from vein to vein. The blood of two, or three, chickens should be taken thus in twenty-four hours." Among civilised nations the pig is the only animal whose blood, as such, furnishes a distinct article of food. Being mixed with fat, (wherein the blood is deficient), and spices, the blend when packed within some yards of intestine, is made into black puddings, savoury, and restorative. In Suffolk these are eagerly raffled-for at Whitsuntide, by the yard. “A Whitsun’ black pudden’ be summat for a chap to look forra’d to,” say the cottagers. It will be remembered that such a black pudding came bouncing down the chimney to Darby and Joan in the familiar old nursery tale. Dealing with this eminently plebeian subject, a writer in the County Gentleman tells how he ascertained that the real old-fashioned black pudding still obtains in many parts of the country; one such locality to wit being the remote Dorsetshire village in which he chanced to be sojourning. "It happened one day’ says he, “that I entered the cottage of a poor woman at the identical moment when the manufacture of black puddings was proceeding; and, resisting the natural instinct to fly from the somewhat terrible scene, I sat down, and made myself acquainted with the process as conducted by my cottage friend. First, she lined the basins in which she proposed to boil the mixture, with strips of membranous fat (the caul) taken from the internal economy of the pig. In a large bowl stood the said mixture, from which these basins were to be filled, such mixture consisting mainly of the pure blood of the pig, to which she had added a little milk, a teacupful of bread-crumbs, and a seasoning of thyme, onions, (sage being also included, unless disliked), pepper, salt, and a dash of all-spice. The whole mass appeared to be in quite a liquid condition ; and when a layer of fat had been put to float on the top, with a piece of clean paper over all, the whole basin was tied up in a cloth, and plunged into a great saucepan full of boiling water, whilst the spectator looked on in amazement, expecting to see the contents of each basin rapidly escape through the cloth, and mingle with the surrounding water. So rapid, however, was the process of coagulation that scarcely any appreciable quantity was lost; and I was told that the puddings would come forth with the consistency of batter puddings, at the end of the boiling. My informant added that many persons baked the puddings in a pie-dish; but she preferred her own plan.” “Without doubt," says the writer, “these puddings are very nourishing;" and, as the said cottager was living, with her father, upon the scanty income of six shillings and sixpence a week, “whilst at a killing the blood for the puddings could be had for the fetching,” it is easy to understand why, in the nursery tale already alluded to, “a yard of black pudding” came to be the first of the three wishes (fulfilment of which was promised by a kind fairy) which entered the minds of Darby and Joan on that memorable occasion. In Suffolk, at Whitsuntide, the raffling for black puddings is the principal fun of the fair. The staking of sixpence by an agricultural labourer may perchance win for him a yard of this black pudding. The said concoction consists of oatmeal, chopped herbs, pearl barley, and lumps of pork fat, “as big as one’s two thumbs," bits of onion, and an alarming indefinite ingredient of pig’s blood, fresh from the slaughtered animal. “Oi tell ye there be a flavour about Whitsun pudden’ oi never gets no time else." A favourite method of carrying the pudding home is to string it round the neck, as “the luck of the raffle !" In Suffolk, likewise, the peasant is conservative of other traditions, and plays the game of “camp,” just as this was played by the followers of Caasar. He eats his Whitsun puddings with much the same Epicurean satisfaction as did his forefathers many centuries before him. “I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as where some buried Cœsar bled.” November the 11th, (Martinmas,) was the great day, in good old times, for slaughtering cattle and pigs, to be salted down for a winter supply of meat. At Martin-mas likewise the “gude wife” had her “puddings to prepare,” long strings of home-made sausages, or hogs puddings, black and white, which would keep for a considerable time, and were often dried, and hung up, with the hams, and bacon, the pickled pork, and the pigs’ heads, the corned mutton, and “hung” beef (known as Martinmas beef), in the great open chimneys of the old-fashioned kitchens. Quaint Tusser tells thus (Five Hundred Points of Husbandrie): “And Martinmass beefe doth beare goode tacke, When country folks do dainties lacke.” …”
too funny!!