3. That of procuring for civil and military hospitals, and even for the armies the most valuable assistance, the details of which would be superfluous here. But the great advantage of this method consists principally in its application to the service of the Navy. It will supply fresh and wholesome provisions for his majesty’s vessels on long voyages with a saving of more than fifty per cent. Mariners will in case of illness be furnished with broth, various and cooling beverages, vegetables and fruits; in a word, they will be able to partake of a number of alimentary and medicinal substances, which will alone be sufficient to prevent or cure the diseases contracted at Sea, more especially the worst of them all, the scurvy. These advantages eminently merit the public attention when we reflect that salted provisions, and, above all, their bad qualities, have caused the loss of more lives at Sea than shipwrecks and naval engagements.
4. Medicine will find in this method the means of relieving humanity, by the facility of meeting every where, and in all seasons, animal substances, and all kinds of vegetables, as well as their juices, preserved with all their natural qualities and virtues: by the same means it will obtain resources infinitely precious in the production of distant regions, preserved in their fresh state.
5. From this method will arise a new branch of industry, relative to the productions of France, by their circulation through the interior, and the exportation abroad, of the produce with which nature has blessed the different countries.
6. This method will facilitate the exportation of the wine of many vineyards: wine which can scarcely be kept a year, even when not removed from the spot, may hereafter be preserved many years though sent abroad.
Finally, this invention cannot fail to enlarge the domain of Chymistry, and become the common benefit of all countries, which will derive the most precious fruits from it.
So many advantages, and an infinity of others which the imagination of the reader will easily conceive, produced by one and the same cause, are a source of astonishment.
SOCIETY FOR THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF NATIONAL INDUSTRY.
Paris, 7th April, 1809.