structural:scholar_edition
Combating putrefaction

In France (as elsewhere), animal intestines were processed to make musical instrument strings, Goldbeater's skin and other products. This was done in "gut factories" (boyauderies), and it was an odiferous and unhealthy process. In or about 1820, the Société d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale offered a prize for the discovery of a method, chemical or mechanical, for separating the peritoneal membrane of animal intestines without putrefaction. The prize was won by Antoine-Germain Labarraque, a 44-year-old French chemist and pharmacist who had discovered that Berthollet's chlorinated bleaching solutions (" Eau de Javel ") not only destroyed the smell of putrefaction of animal tissue decomposition, but also actually retarded the decomposition.

Labarraque's research resulted in the use of chlorides and hypochlorites of lime (calcium hypochlorite) and of sodium (sodium hypochlorite) in the boyauderies. The same chemicals were found to be useful in the routine disinfection and deodorization of latrines, sewers, markets, abattoirs, anatomical theatres, and morgues. They were successful in hospitals, lazarets, prisons, infirmaries (both on land and at sea), magnaneries, stables, cattle-sheds, etc.; and they were beneficial during exhumations, embalming, outbreaks of epidemic disease, fever, and blackleg in cattle.