4 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
book, “ Wash your hands carefully, using a nail-brush,” but 
wipes his fingers frequently upon his pantaloons, which are blue 
checked, of a strong material made for jails, and probably in 
two pairs, the sound parts of one being arranged so as to underlie 
the holes in the other.” But this is by way of a diversion, as 
touching our main argument. 
Again, in China, as Dr. MacGowan, of Shanghai, relates, “little 
distinction is made between “materia medica,’ and “ materia 
alimentaria”’ ; certain curative properties being ascribed to most 
articles which are used as food. Nearly all portions of animals 
(the human frame included) are suppcsed to be efficacious in 
the treatment of disease. Some of such animal substances are 
macerated in fermented, or distilled liquors, and are termed 
“wines ;” thus there are mutton wine, dog wine, deer wine, 
deer-horn wine, tiger-bone wine, snake wine, and tortoise wine.” 
In a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Medicine recently 
presented to the University of Paris, M. Jean Barrier has 
embodied the results of a historical research as to the therapeutic 
preparations of animal origin employed dietetically by the 
ancients. In the Asclepeia of Greece bull’s blood, and ass flesh 
were prescribed for consumptives. Preparations of serpent 
were also largely in use. Hippocrates, although he mostly 
used simples, occasionally prescribed ox-gall, the dung of asses, 
and goats, ete. Celsus recommended fox’s liver, or lung, in 
asthma, and the hot blood of a newly-killed gladiator in epilepsy. 
Pliny’s Natural History is an encyclopedia of organo-therapy. 
From him we learn that the ancients used certain glands of the 
hare, the stag, the horse, the pig, and the hyena, as aphrodisiacs, 
and as remedies for epilepsy, a disease for which the human 
brain was also employed. Renal colic was treated with hare’s 
kidneys, boar’s bladder was in repute for dysuria, the hyena’s 
heart for cardiac palpitation, the partridge’s stomach for colic. 
Similar food-medication found favour with the Arabian phy- 
sicians. Albucasis taught that the human brain could be 
nourished, and strengthened by eating cock’s brains; hen’s 
gizzard was excellent for the stomach; in short, each organ 
could be kept in order, or functionally improved by the adminis- 
tration of the corresponding organ of an animal, served at table. 
To sum up our subject—vitally important as it is—the foremost 
advance of modern science now at length holds out a promise of 
prolonging healthy life by a suitable broth, far beyond the present 
