As many of the members of this forum know, I am a student of the history of William Powell & Son. This morning, I was reviewing an 1805 ledger that included an entry concerning the sale of what appears to be " 4 Gallons of Goats bile."
Any ideas on how goat's bile was used? Perhaps as a wood or leather stain?
Steve: I couldn't find anything regarding the use of goat's bile in leather tanning or processing. It is apparently a light yellow-green and I couldn't find anything about using it as a leather dye either.
Animal bile has long been used in traditional Chinese medicine
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4123376/Could Powell have killed goats on site for their hides, then sold the meat and bile? Lots of South Asians in London c. 1800.
Goat bile and guts are used in a SE Asia soup - Papaitan in the Philippines
I wonder if it was an ingredient for ye olde browning or blacking formula ?
There's been some strange concoctions used in the past.
Some of the delightful stuff used in 1800s browning formulae:
Spirits of Nitre = It is obtained by the distillation of alcohol with nitric and sulphuric acids.
Aqua Fortis = Nitric acid. Nitric acid is a strong oxidizing agent. It reacts with metals, oxides, and hydroxides, forming nitrate salts. Aqua Regia is a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids.
Corrosive Sublimate = BiChloride of Mercury. It is one of the most toxic forms of mercury because it is more soluble than most in water. It was used as a reagent in archaic photographic processes. It can kill you.
Blue Vitriol = Alum and copper sulfate
Tincture of Steel = Ferric or Iron Chloride in Grain Alcohol. The substance decomposes on heating above 200°C producing toxic and corrosive gases including hydrogen chloride.
Tincture of Iron = Ferric Chloride, obtained as dark-green, lustrous crystals by heating iron in Chlorine. Process produces chlorine gas, which is highly toxic when inhaled.
Copperas = Ferrous Sulfate
Black brimstone = Sulphur Vivum
Bile has a number of organic molecules including bile acids, cholesterol, phospholipids and bilirubin and possibly it was used in the color case hardening process??
Bile; a bitter greenish-brown alkaline fluid that aids digestion and is secreted by the liver and stored in the gallbladder.
When I was growing up in the country we always butchered virtually all of our meat. When we cut the gall bladder from the liver we always cut a wide Berth around it I simply cannot imagine anyone deliberately & intentionally eating Bile
Over my years I have "Belched" up enough bile to satisfy any longing I might have for the taste of it to last me at least 25 lifetimes.
Steve was correct at the beginning.
1865 technique for isolating cholepyrrhin - "Bile Pigment"
https://books.google.com/books?id=2OJYAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA585&lpg
Bile can also be made into a cleaner to remove stains a as well. No idea if it was a preferred method or just a cheap use of bile.
As a cattle veterinarian that does a fair amount of goat work - I can’t imagine how many animals it would take to get 4 gallons of bile. There’s barely 100 ml in the gall bladder most of the time. Maybe they traded a Powell shotgun for 4 gallons of bile?
gwsmith makes a very good point concerning the number of goats it would take to harvest 4 gallons of bile. In 1805 with no refrigeration, it would quickly putrefy too. And the ledger entry in the OP was a sale rather than a purchase. Why would a gunmaker be selling bile in any quantity? If it was being used for stain, dye, case hardening, or any of the other guesses thus far, I'd think they would be purchasing bile rather than selling it.
Seems more likely to me that the presumably handwritten ledger entry is either faded or somewhat illegible, and actually refers to something other than 4 gallons of goat bile. It might be helpful to see a pic of that entry.