" In 1817, d’Arcet Jr., a chemist by trade, came up with a method for extracting gelatin from bones (and money from Parisian welfare coffers). Public hospitals and poorhouses, having swallowed the preposterous claim that two ounces of d’Arcet’s gelatin was the nutritional equivalent of three-plus pounds of meat, began serving soup made with the gelatin. So plentiful were "

― Mary Roach , Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal