74 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
Fried bacon fat, and its liquid part, serve usefully to correct 
constipation. And a curious old remedy to stay nose-bleeding 
is vouched-for again recently by Dr. Atkinson—to “take a 
piece of fat bacon, about 2 or 3 inches long, and of sufficient size ; 
cut it into a proper shape, and as large as can be easily forced 
into the nostril; apply it by pressing into the bleeding nostril, 
and let it remain in place several hours. It controls the hemor- 
rhage, and is not uncomfortable to the patient.” 
By the processes of salting, and smoking, the flesh of the hog 
is made more digestible. Like all fat meats, it is deficient in 
water. The Romans discovered fifty different flavours in pork ; 
and under the hands of their skilled cooks, swine’s flesh was often 
transformed into delicate fish, ducks, turtle-doves, or capons. 
With them the Trojan Hog was a favourite dish, which was a 
gastronomic imitation of the Horse of Troy, its inside being 
stuffed with asafctida, and myriads of small game. In 
Lincolnshire, a pig when first put up to fatten. has garlands 
hung round its neck to avert the spell of malicious witches, 
these garlands being made from branches of the Mountain Ash, 
or Wicken-tree, or Witchen Wicken. Truly may it be said 
that without pork there would have been no bacon, and without 
bacon no accomplished cookery. 
“Chowder” is a dish of American origin; it consists of 
boiled pickled pork, cut in slices, with fried onions, slices of 
turbot, or other fish, and mashed potatoes, all placed alternately 
in a stewpan, and seasoned with spices and herbs, Claret, also 
ketchup, and then simmered together. 
When Benjamin D’Israeli first went as a young man down to 
High Wycombe (1832) on a political canvass among the 
Buckingham farmers, after the week’s end, when writing to his 
sister, he said: “I have been to Marathon ; we have lived for 
a week on the Honey of Hymettus, and the Boar of Pentelicus ; 
we found one at a little village—just killed—and purchased 
half of it, but this was not so good as Bradenham pork.” It is 
remarkable that the cry of a raven resembles the words “ Pork ! 
Pork!” 
“From the mountains 
The ravens begin with their ‘ pork, porking ’ ery.”—Sylvester. 
A pork pie with raisins has for many years held its own at 
farmhouses in the Midlands ; this is a raised pie, in which some 
