“I washed my hands but they were still dirty!
The stain was so dark and deep!
I rubbed with the saop all night long!
Only to realise t’was a dream in my sleep!”
Remember how you have always been told to wash your hands before you eat? Of course frequent washing became an obsession after COVID!
I still remember the days of Cadaveric dissection in our MBBS! Our initial days we used to wash and wash with all sorts of soaps and cleanser to feel clean and mainly to get that smell of formalin out! If the lunch was after dissection then we of course would not be in a mood to eat! Later on adaptation set in and we used to just have a quick wash with or without soap! And rush for a hearty lunch!
Now, how would you feel when I tell you that one of the biggest inventions happened because this scientist rushed to have food without washing his hands!?
So the Scientist in question is Constantin Fahlberg! The overworked guy (who isn’t!?)
was working for a long time on the compound radicals and substitution products of coal tar, and he had made a number of scientific discoveries, that were , so far as he knew, of no commercial value!
One evening he was so interested in his laboratory that he forgot about his supper till quite late, and then rushed off for a meal without stopping to wash his hands!
Since it was pre Covid days, I guess it was still not the norm!
So he sat down, broke a piece of bread, and put it to his lips. It tasted unspeakably sweet! He did not ask why it was so, probably because he thought it was some cake or sweetmeat.
He rinsed his mouth with water, and dried his moustache (yes, that was also the norm!) with his napkin, when, to his surprise the napkin tasted sweeter than the bread!
Then he was puzzled and he again raised his goblet, and, as fortune would have it, applied his mouth where his fingers had touched it before. The water seemed syrup!
It flashed on him that it was the cause of the singular universal sweetness, and he accordingly tasted the end of his thumb, and found it surpassed any confectionery he had ever eaten!
He saw the whole thing at once and had discovered some coal tar substance which out-sugared sugar! He then dropped his dinner, and ran back to the laboratory!
There, in his excitement, he tasted the contents of every beaker and evaporating dish on the table. Luckily for him, none contained any corrosive or poisonous liquid or then we would not have heard about it! I still wonder if many such inventions have been missed because the inventor at that time was not so lucky!
So anyway one of them contained an impure solution of this new product. On this he worked then for weeks and months till I had determined its chemical composition, its characteristics and reactions, and the best modes of making it, scientifically and commercially!
When he first published my researches, some people laughed as if it were a scientific joke, others, of a more skeptical turn, doubted the discovery and the discoverer, and still others proclaimed the work as being of no practical value!
But when the public first saw this product and tasted it, everything changed!
The product is proving a wonderful success. It is used already in many ways. Prof. Leyden, of Berlin, recommended it to sweeten fine wafers and other foods for invalids, and wrote a formula for it in such cases. This is used by bakers and confectioners, and more specially by Mannl & Co., the great wafer manufacturers of Carlsbad, Bohemia. It is also employed by the makers of glucose and beet sugar!
The product is so sweet that two or three teaspoonfuls converts a barrel of water into syrup! A small wafer of it converts the bitterest quinine solution or acid drink into a regular molasses!
Yes! The sweet sugar substitute is Saccharin!
It is not a sugar, but contains carbon, hydrogen, sulphur, oxygen, and nitrogen; and its chemical name is benzoyl sulphuric imide. It is neither a nutrient nor a poison. It is derived from the toluene of coal tar, by a process comprising at least seven distinct steps! It has a far sweeter taste than sugar, and a faint, delicate flavor of bitter almonds. Of course, the side effects and other profile has to be researched further but overall sometimes even not washing your hands may lead to lottery! Of it may not work everytime like when sometimes the lamp burns while sometimes or somewhere your heart! Which reminds me of the famous song of birthday celebrity Hemanta Mukhopadhyay; Kahin Deep Jale Kahin Dil!
Listen to it and you will get a good sleep! Of course if your heart is burning when you are old then it may not be love, but more likely acidity!
Shubh Ratri!
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