On the Use of Blood, Bone and Guts -and- the Man Who Painted Dead Chicken Feet

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post--possible revulsion factor

I was looking for something else--mortality rates in Canada for a post on the value of a dead human body in 1860--when I found this book on the use of discarded goods and raw byproduct, a sort of early recycling effort.  The work was by Edwin Lankester, and it is called The Uses of Animals in Relation to the Industry of Man; Being a course of lectures delivered at the South Kensington Museum (published in London by Robert Hardwicke in  1860), and the initial data that caught my attention was this:

Value of a Dead Horse:

[Source: Figure 7, Lankester, page 159, found originally at the Victoria and Albert Museum]

There was seemingly little that could be laid waste, even from the majestic horse. 

Here are some other chapter sub-heads:

And from the index we can see that the book meant business when it came to bone:

The book describes a number of interesting professions, though perhaps not many as colorful as the painter of dead chicken feet:

Lankester's book wasn't all blood and bones, and addressed wide swaths of waste in society and what to do with them, an early exegesis on recycling and re-employment. In one section he looked at the second hand market and  counted the number of street merchants in central London  (alone) and found that there were 724 of them (including six sellers of used telescopes and optical equipment: