Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/113

 MUSTAED 105 when he took the same chair in the Miami medical college, resigning in 1860 and remov- ing to Boston. His surgical practice in Cin- cinnati and the neighboring country was large, and he was widely known and resorted to as a consulting surgeon. He was a prominent temperance lecturer, and advocated temper- ance in eating as well as drinking. He pub- lished " Health, its Friends and its Foes " (12mo. Boston, 1862). MUSTARD, the name of a well known condi- ment as well as of the plants which produce it. In commerce two sorts of mustard seed are known, the white and the black, which are produced by plants formerly called sinapis alba and 8. nigra ; but in the most recent revision of the cruciferce, the family to which they be- long, sinapis is reduced to brassica, the genus which includes the cabbage and the turnip, and according to this view the mustard plants are Irassica alba and B. nigra. White mustard Mustard. is an annual, with a stem 1 to 2 ft. high, smooth or with a few spreading hairs ; its leaves are pinnately lobed, more or less rough, the lobes coarsely toothed, with the terminal one the largest ; the yellow flowers in a raceme, suc- ceeded by pods three f oiirths of an inch to an inch long, bristly, upon spreading stalks and terminated by a stout flattened beak which forms more than one half of the pod and is one-seeded, while the lower part of the pod is turgid and contains several seeds ; the seeds are pale brown or brownish yellow. Black mus- tard is a somewhat taller and smoother plant, and has less divided leaves ; the pods are erect, smooth, about half an inch long, and somewhat four-sided, without the long beak, but tipped with the style, with much smaller and very dark brown seeds. Both species are natives of Europe, and are found in the older portions of this country as naturalized weeds. The seeds of both are sold by druggists ; a portion of the supply is of home growth, the rest being imported. White mustard is much used in England as a salad ; the seeds are sown very thickly, and the young plants are cut while still in the seed leaf ; cress (lepidium sativutri) is usually sown with the mustard, and the product of the two together is known as " small salading." This species is sometimes culti- vated in gardens as a pot herb or greens, the leaves being cooked while yet tender. In Eng- land mustard is much sown as a crop for for- age and for green manuring, and the few ex- periments that have been made with it here have been favorable; sowed at the rate of about 12 Ibs. to the acre, it gives an abundant crop of succulent forage, which is cut before the seeds begin to mature anci fed to cattle, sheep, and swine. When either kind is raised for seed, it is cut with a sickle before it begins to drop its seed, and when dry threshed with a flail. The great consumption of mustard seed is in the preparation of the " flour of mustard " for table use; the black seeds are the most pungent, but both kinds are used together ; the seeds are crushed between rollers, then pound- ed in mortars, and the finer portions sifted from the husks. This was first prepared in Durham, England, by a woman who kept her process a secret, and the name " Durham mustard " is used as a trade mark by manufacturers at the present day. There is probably no article of domestic consumption more generally adul- terated than flour of mustard; wheat flour to increase the weight, turmeric to give color, and cayenne to add pungency, are the most com- mon adulterations ; sometimes gypsum or white clay is used with chrome yellow (chromate of lead) to increase the color. The microscope readily shows the presence of flour, turmeric, and other vegetable admixtures ; but to detect the inorganic impurities recourse must be had to chemical analysis. The husks, separated by the sieves in the manufacture of mustard, yield by expression a bland fixed oil which is used for burning and other purposes ; the cake left after expressing is used as a manure, it being too pungent for cattle food. The two kmds of mustard seed differ in their chemical constitu- ents, which in both are rather complex. The activity of black mustard seeds depends upon a volatile oil which does not exist ready formed in the seeds, but is developed only by the con- tact of water. The seeds contain myronio acid, in which sulphur is found in combination with oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen. Another principle is my rosin e, an albuminoid which is affected by heat, alcohol, and other agents in the same manner as albumen. In the presence of water, myrosine and myronic acid react upon one another, and produce the volatile oil of mustard, or sulpho-cyanide of allyle, an exceedingly acrid and pungent liquid, which promptly blisters when applied to the skin. White mustard produces no volatile oil, but its activity depends upon a non-volatile acrid principle, which results from the action of myrosine upon sulpho-sinapisine, a con-