Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 March 1889 — Sugar-Making a Chinese Invention. [ARTICLE]

Sugar-Making a Chinese Invention.

The Chinese, who invented almost everything before anybody else heard of it, claim to be the original discoverers of the process of sugar-making, and it is said that sugar was used in China as long ago as 3,000 years. This is misty, but the fact is well established that it was manufactured in China under the Tsin dynasty, 200 years at least before the Christian era began. India has put forward a claim for priority of invention, but the probability is that the Hindoos learned the art of sugar-making from the Chinese, and that through them the knowledge finally spread to the Western nations. Nearchus, when sent by Alexander on an exploring voyage on the Indus, brought back reports of “honey” which was made by the Asiatics from Cane without the help of bees. At this time neither the Greeks nor the Jews nor the Babylonians had any knowledge of sugar, but later the art of making the artificial “honey” became known and practiced, though its progress and development was exceedingly slow. It was prescribed as a medicine by Galen in A. D. 150, and up to the seventeenth century it had become nothing more than a costly luxury, to be used only on special occasions. Even as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century the annual consumption of sugar in Great Britain had reached only 20,000,000 pounds, whereas it is now more than 2,000,000,000 pounds. Refined sugar was not made in England till 1659. The art of refining was learned by a Venetian merchant from the Saracens, who sold the secret to him for 100,000 crowns.— Good Housekeeping.