Liebig's meat extract, taken as meat tea, is a medicinal food for invalids and the sick, marketed through physicians as a restorative for those too weak or unwell to consume ordinary solid food.
LEMCO marketed the extract as a medicinal food: a restorative for invalids and the sick, sold through physicians and apothecaries and positioned for cases of weakness and digestive disorder in those who could not manage ordinary solid food (Finlay 1992, 1995). These medicinal claims ran alongside the broader nutritive promise that the concentrated extract carried the strength of the beef it was made from, and they targeted the same buyers, invalids, officers, and explorers, who would pay a premium for a scientific preparation.
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 provided a commercial opportunity: LEMCO marketed the extract as a product of military necessity, claiming it had been supplied at the solicitation of German authorities and had proved of immense service sustaining soldiers under circumstances when solid food could not be obtained. The curative claims were rejected by medical critics alongside the nutritional ones; the Lancet’s 1865 articles and subsequent experimental work found the extract to be a stimulant and flavouring agent at best, without the protein content that would make it effective in the recovery from infectious disease.
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Sources
- Quackery and cookery: Justus von Liebig's extract of meat and the theory of nutrition in the Victorian age — Finlay, M. R. 'Quackery and cookery: Justus von Liebig's extract of meat and the theory of nutrition in the Victorian age.' Bull Hist Med 66, no. 3 (1992): 404–18. PMID 1392506.
- Early marketing of the theory of nutrition: the science and culture of Liebig's extract of meat — Finlay, M. R. 'Early marketing of the theory of nutrition: the science and culture of Liebig's extract of meat.' Clio Med 32 (1995): 48–74. PMID 9061236.