CABBAGE. 133 
praising the Cabbage for many curative virtues, added: “ It 
must be confessed this vegetable is greatly to be accused for 
lying undigested in the stomach, and provoking eructations.” 
And Culpeper told a like tale respecting the men, and women 
of Cato’s time: “I know not what metall their bodies were 
made of; this I am sure: Cabbages are extremely windy, 
whether you take them as meat, or as medicine! yea, as windy 
meat as can be eaten, unless you eat bagpipes, or bellows.” 
Dean Ramsay tells about a Scotch farmer who at a tenants’ 
dinner was asked by a Duchess to take Cabbage, and excused 
himself with the delicate insinuation, ‘‘ Disna’ your grace find 
it a verra windy vegetable ?”’ Partridge and Cabbage suit the 
patrician table, whilst bacon and Cabbage better please the 
taste, and the requirements of the man in the street. 
When fresh and young, and properly cooked, Cabbages are’ 
of excellent service against scrofula, their innate sulphur being 
a very salutary constituent. For a swollen face, to keep applied 
thereto a Cabbage leaf, first made quite hot at the fire, will afford 
relief (the same being likewise an Irish remedy for a sore throat), 
emollient warmth being thus secured, together with certain 
antiseptic exhalations from the steamy leaf. Also, if laid over 
a blistered surface, a large leaf of common white Cabbage, 
gently bruised, will promote a free discharge from the denuded 
skin; similarly, too, when placed next the skin in dropsy of 
the ankles. 
Fermented white Cabbage was a well-known dish of the old 
Romans; and one of our early rustic authors advised to eat a 
plateful of this sour dish for dessert, ‘‘ which would so quickly 
digest the dinner just swallowed that another such meal might 
be relished immediately afterwards, and eaten with impunity.” 
For the production of this so-called Sauer-kraut the white 
Cabbage is shredded, mixed with salt in fine powder sufficient 
to produce a good pickle, then placed in a barrel, or other such 
vessel, in a compressed state, and allowed to undergo. the lactic 
acid, or sour milk fermentation, by which the sugar becomes 
transformed into lactic acid, whilst giving to the product its name 
of “Sour Cabbage.” In the Sauer-kraut of Germany the 
Cabbages are similarly allowed to ferment, so that by bacterial 
development the vegetable starch becomes converted into sugar, 
and then into vinegar. When prepared for cooking, Sauer-kraut 
has to be washed, and thus relieved of its excess of acid; it is 
