78 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
The Banana is well suited for persons who cannot easily digest 
starchy foods. Stanley, the African traveller, found that a gruel 
prepared with Banana flour, and milk, was the only thing he 
could digest during gastric attacks. In Thoughts on the Universe, 
by Master Byles Gridley (0. Wendell Holmes’ Guardian Angel), 
stands recorded the reflection, “ What sweet, smooth voices 
the negroes have! A hundred generations fed on Bananas ! 
Compare them with our apple-eating white folks! It won’tdo!” 
‘‘ By reason of its fat-forming constituents being much in 
excess of its muscle-feeding, and nerve-nourishing proteids, the 
Banana,” says Dr. R. Hutchison, “is too bulky to be able to 
serve as the main constituent of a healthy diet; about eighty 
would have to be eaten daily so as to yield a proper supply of 
vital energy for the body. No wonder then that in tropical 
countries, where Bananas are largely consumed, the inhabitants 
are apt to show an undue abdominal development.” But this 
computation is surely overdrawn? A barrel of sugar made 
from Bananas was recently exhibited in New York, the taste 
being pleasant, and palatable, the Banana flavour, full, and 
Sweet in itself, conveying a really tropical impression. But 
the great trouble is to make this sugar perfectly dry; it can 
be sold much cheaper than other sugars. 
BARBERRY (see Fruits). 
Barserry berries, as supplied at the shops, have some excellent 
medicinal virtues. They grow on a cultivated variety of the 
wild shrub Berberis, as found in our English copses, and hedges, 
particularly about Essex. These small scarlet berries are 
stoncless when old, containing malic and citric acids ; they also 
afford curative principles, “‘berberin,’ and “ oxyacanthin,” 
which exercise a stimulating effect on the liver, and are astringent. 
Barberry jam helps to obviate gravel, and to relieve irritation 
of the bladder. Tusser, in his Good Huswifelie Physicke (1573), 
has commended :— 
= Conserve of Barbarie; Quinces as such, 
With Sirops that easeth the sickly so much.” 
A jelly having virtues of this kind may be made by boiling an 
equal weight of the berries (when ripe) and of Sugar together, and 
straining off the sweet juice to jelly when cool. The syrup of 
_ Barberries forms, with water, an excellent astringent gargle 
