278 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
except those reserved for breeding, were killed, and salted down 
at the beginning of winter; and the meat-eating population 
had for several months in the year only salted meat. Now, 
thanks to the cabbages, and turnips, grown in most cottage 
allotments, and to the winter use of these vegetables on farms, 
such terrible scorbutic diseases as formerly prevailed are no 
longer with us. With reference to the theory that leprosy is 
due in the main to badly-cured, and badly-cooked salt fish, a 
modern authority holds as an opposite opinion that the leprosy 
is owing, not to the imperfect curing of the fish, but to the 
inherent uncleanness of the creature itself. ‘“ Fish,” says this 
deponent, “are scavengers, garbage-mongers, and devourers 
of carrion; and although, thanks to a taste for cabbage, we 
nowadays avoid leprosy, we still contract lupus from the turbot, 
epilepsy from the festive whitebait, with tuberculosis from the 
mackerel, and the filleted sole.” It has been supposed that the 
mackerel was one of the fish forbidden to the Israelites of old 
under the law “ Whatsoever hath not fins and scales, ye may 
not eat.” 
The fat of fish comprises a smaller proportion of the compounds 
of solid fatty acids than does the fat of land animals. It is~ 
mainly composed of the glycerides of various unsaturated acids. 
The fish-liver oils commonly contain certain bile products (which 
give rise to characteristic reactions in colour with acids, and 
alkalies). A considerable proportion of unsaponifiable matter, 
chiefly cholesterin, is also a usual constituent thereof. Iodine 
is sparingly present in fish, but the significance of its 
occurrence is yet obscure. Salt fish is but slowly dissolved in 
the stomach, because its fibres have become hardened by the 
salt. Fish oil for medicinal purposes is obtained principally 
from the Cod, but also from the Pollock, Turbot, Ling, and 
Dorse. The milt, or soft roe, is the spermatic organ and its 
secretion (a sexual stimulant ?) of the male fish ; whilst the 
ovarian spawn, or hard roe, is that of the female fish. Hufeland, 
and others, have found the soft roe of herrings useful against 
tubercular consumption affecting the windpipe. 
Considered widely, a diet comprising frequent fish, always 
fresh, and of proper quality, plainly cooked, is certainly calmative 
for excitable persons of vivaciously nervous temperament. 
Nevertheless, Shakespeare has told of others who :-— 
“* Making many fish meals, 
Fall into a kind of male green sickness.” 
