340 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
sugar, for colouring, half an ounce; mixed together, and to be 
used from an ounce to an ounce and a half to each bottleful of 
water, or mineral water. The Ginger beer of ordinary use, as 
provided in stone bottles, and fermented with yeast, contains 
at least 2 per cent of alcohol as the result of its fermentation 
proceeding to the vinous stage. Dr. Robt. Hutchison, in his 
Food and Dietetics (1902) avers that the article named Ginger 
beer, as now commonly sold, may have nothing to do with 
Ginger at all, because the requisite degree of sharpness is usually 
obtained by aid of tincture of capsicum (Cayenne pepper). 
Genuine fermented Ginger-beer is a very different product ; 
its ingredients are: water, seven gallons; loaf sugar, seven 
pounds ; bruised ginger, half a pound ; tartaric acid, two ounces ; 
gum arabic, one-third of a pound ; oil of lemon, one fluid drachm ; 
yeast (brewer's), one-sixth of a pint. We are warned that 
latterly in the making of Ginger essence certain unscrupulous 
manufacturers, particularly in America, and Germany, have 
taken to the use of wood alcohol, a poisonous agent, which has 
a deadly effect upon the nervous centres. Mothers are in the 
habit of giving this “ Essence of Jamaica Ginger” for griping 
pains in the belly to their children after eating unripe fruit, 
thereby doing the poor sufferers much more harm than if they 
had been left alone to fight the battle of passing colic. 
Grantham Gingerbread, a white form of Ginger biscuit, is 
made especially at Grantham, Lincolnshire, and sold there 
particularly at Fair times. Forty or fifty years ago the brown 
Gingerbread displayed on stalls at village Feasts, and Fairs, 
was shaped into the figures of animals, and whimsical devices 
(sometimes coarsely significant), which were gilded over with 
Dutch metal. In Tom Brown’s School Days Gingerbread of 
such sort was retailed at the stall of “ Angel Heavens,” sole 
vendor thereof, “‘ whose booth groaned with kings, and queens, 
and elephants, and prancing steeds, all glaring with gold ;_ there 
was more gold on Angel’s cakes than there is ginger in those 
of this degenerate age.” Gingerbread (‘‘ Pain d’Epice”’) has 
been in use at Paris since the fourteenth century. For “ Ginger- 
bread Nuts,” which are handy, comforting, and slightly laxative, 
rub half a pound of butter into one and a half pounds of flour, 
with half a pound of brown sugar, and three-quarters of an ounce 
of fine ginger, powdered; mix well with ten ounces of dark 
treacle ; make into a stiff paste, and cut into circular nuts with 
