282 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
of the old angler’s face to a fish. It is hard, angular, and of no 
expression ; it seems to have been a thing ‘ subdued to what it 
worked in,—to have become native to the watery element. 
One might have said to Walton, ‘ Oh, flesh, flesh, how art thou 
fishified !’ He looked like a Pike dressed in broadcloth instead 
of butter.” 
“A pretty kettle of fish” is a familiar phrase as applied to 
any muddled, or mismanaged concern, the “kettle of fish ” 
being actually a sort of stew well known in Scotland as fish 
and sauce, generally made from Haddocks. Said Alice (Through 
the Looking Glass) :— 
*T took a kettle, large and new, 
Fit for the deed I had to do ; 
My heart went hop, my heart went thump, 
I filled the kettle at the pump. 
Then someone came to me and said, 
* The little fishes are in bed.’ 
I said to him, I said it plain, 
‘Then you must wake them up again.’ ” 
It is of essential requirement that all fish before being eaten 
should be raised in temperature somehow (by cooking, for choice) 
to a degree at which all germs of an animal, or a vegetable nature, 
which may be within, or upon the fish, shall be killed. This 
rule must be enforced with regard to fish as rigorously as to 
veal, and pork, in each case for similar reasons ; for it has been 
proved that several varieties of fish harbour in their flesh the 
young forms of certain parasites, which, if they escape death 
by the process of cooking, and are eaten by man, develop within 
his intestinal tract into the adult form of the parasite, and cause 
serious illness, with a long-continued disturbance of health. 
All fish therefore (except some shell-fish) must be cooked for 
the above reason, as well as to make it palatable, in some way 
before it will be eatable; and of all modes of cooking, to boil 
the fish is easiest, and most certain in effect. Whenever sea- 
water irom the open sea is available for boiling fish it should be 
preferred to water artificially salted, this mode of cooking being 
known as “d Hollandaise.” Fish cannot be too fresh for 
kitchen purposes ; the Dutch are as nice about this point at the 
present day, as the Romans were formerly. According to 
Seneca, in past times the most fastidious among them would 
not eat fish unless it were cooked on the same day as that of its 
being taken, so that, as they expressed it, “ there should be still 
