150 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
or milk, (perhaps adding a few grains of alkaline potash to assist 
the solution). Another reason why Cheese proves indigestible 
to certain persons, is that during the process of ripening, small 
quantities of fatty acids are produced, which are apt to disagree 
in the stomach ; but when once reaching the intestines, Cheese 
is absorbed as readily, and as completely as meat. To the person 
who wishes to use Cheese as a substitute for meat (because more 
economical, and fully as nourishing), the Canadian, or Dutch 
quality may be best commended, preferably the former; and new 
Cheese is much to be advocated, before fermentation has begun 
to any degree of progress. But Cheese should not be eaten at 
all freely by persons who are leading inactive, indolent lives, 
since the substantial casein, which is its chief constituent, 
would to such persons be difficult of digestion; otherwise its 
component principles furnish fat, heat, and energy to a remarkable 
degree. 
The average palate has been taught to relish Cheese after 
it has undergone butyric acid fermentation (which is, in 
fact, the first stage of putridity). But years ago, when 
the small dairymen made plain Cheese for their own use, not 
for the market, they began to eat it before it was a fortnight 
old, and took it as freely as they did bread, never dreaming 
of its proving difficult of digestion, which it never was. 
Nowadays, to put such simply compressed casein before 
the lover of modern-cured Cheese, would be to him almost an 
insult ; and yet from the standpoint of health, it is the only 
Cheese which can be altogether approved ; though equal praise 
may be given to the fresh curd, consisting of unaltered albumin 
of milk, in combination with some fat, a little milk sugar, and 
some lactic acid. The numerous varieties of mature Cheese 
are products altered more or less to a degree proportionate with 
their stage of ripeness. Some soft Cheeses ripen in a week or 
two; others, of firmer consistence, take many months to mature. 
Parmesan Cheese, made at Parma, in Northern Italy, from 
skimmed milk of special cows, and coloured greenish with saffron, 
is a hard article which requires three years to ripen. 
Whilst contained in fresh milk the casein, which forms the 
substantial basis of Cheese, exists in two forms, the 
soluble, and the insoluble; in the first of these it remains 
completely dissolved in the milk, whilst in the latter it is 
made by art to coagulate as insoluble Cheese, but carrying 
