160 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
kinds of Cheese, when only partially decayed, will start a useful 
digestive fermentation in the contents of the stomach, after a 
full meal, just as sour leaven when introduced into sweet dough, 
will cause the whole mass to ferment; and therefore it is that 
the taking a small portion of Cheese, partly decayed (but not 
putrid), at the end of an ample dinner, will promote the better 
digestion of the whole meal. Old Cheese can scarcely be 
discerned to be the same as when it was new. Matthiolus 
(1570), was of opinion that only then is it good for gouty 
persons, being also applied outwardly to the parts where they 
feel their great pains ; some persons have been instanced who 
by the use thereof have been recovered. Dr. Haig says: “ No 
one has, I believe, found any xanthin, or uric acid, in milk, or 
Cheese.” 
To summarize the matter, Cheese may be eaten for two distinct 
purposes: either for the general sustenance of the body as a 
food abundant in animal nourishment (casein), and warming 
fat, with milk sugar ; or as a sort of digestive condiment, taken, 
as it were, in morsel form just at the end of the usual fare, as is 
customary at old-fashioned dinner tables, with a ripe Cheese 
in a tasty stage of decay, and mould. The vegetable moulds 
of Cheese are Aspergillus glaucus, blue and green ; Sporindonema 
caset, red; and the Cheese mite is an Acarus. The savoury 
principle of Cheese, a chemical oxide termed “leucine,” has of 
all foodstuffs the highest sapidity. 
“Mice,” wrote old Fuller, “are the best tasters of the 
tenderest Cheese, and have given their verdict for the good- 
ness of the Welsh.” Horace Smith tells a_ little story 
which is appropriate in this respect: “‘ My dear children,’ 
said an old rat to his young family, ‘the infirmities of 
age are pressing so heavily upon me that I have determined 
to dedicate the short remainder of my days to mortifica- 
tion and penance, in a narrow and lonely hole which I 
have lately discovered; but let me not interfere with your 
juvenile enjoyments : youth is the season for pleasure : be happy 
therefore, and obey my last injunction, never to come near me 
in my retreat! God bless you all!’ Deeply affected, whilst 
snivelling audibly, and wiping his paternal eye with his tail, 
the old rat withdrew, and was seen no more for several days, 
when his youngest daughter, moved rather by filial affection 
than by that sense of curiosity which is attributed to her sex, 
