342 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
man, when dinners were precarious things, and a full meal was 
something more than a common blessing, when a bellyfull was a 
windfall, and looked like a special providence, then in the shouts, 
and triumphal songs with which, after a season of sharp abstinence 
a lucky booty of goat’s flesh (or deer’s flesh) would naturally 
be ushered home, existed perhaps the germ of the modern “ Grace 
before meat.” This animal, the Goat (Capra hircus), long 
associated with medicine, and named a carpendo, from cropping, 
yields a milk “accounted cordiall against consumption: yea, 
its very stench is used fora perfume in Araby the Happy.” The 
milk is richer in solids than that of the woman, the cow, or the 
ass, containing the largest proportion of cheese substance 
(casein), and the most fatty constituents, as well as salts, though 
it is comparatively poor in sugar of milk. It possesses hircin, 
r hircic acid, which has a peculiar smell, and taste. Goats’ 
milk will often serve to check obstinate diarrhea, whilst whey 
made therefrom helps to obviate scrofulous disease. This whey 
is the chief means of a cure carried out specially in well-known 
establishments of Germany, and the Tyrol. The whey is 
sweetish, balsamic, and agreeable, with a greenish tint, and 
consisting of sugar in solution with lactic acid, and with animal 
extractive matters, such as osmazome, and the like ; also mineral 
salts are present, these being the chlorides of potassium, and 
sodium, sulphate of soda, and phosphate, and carbonate of lime. 
Help is given in the cure by the restorative atmospheric, and 
climatic influences which are brought locally to bear. It is 
essential that the whey shall be made from the milk of Goats 
which range, and browse on high mountains, particularly of 
Switzerland. In habitual torpor of the digestive organs, with 
constipation of the bowels, this whey-cure by Goats’ milk effects 
admirable results, whilst in the scrofulous affections of children 
the benefits. are simply wonderful. 
At Naples there are no milk carts, but the cow is brought 
to the door, and milked on the spot to the quantity required. 
“ Passa la vacca”’ is said by the customer on a blank day,— 
“Pass on! can’t afford milk to-day;” which has become a 
homely proverb expressing far more than that, “the wolf (as 
well as the cow) is at the door.” ‘“ Close behind come the Goats, 
and they, too, must be milked in sight of the purchasers, or how 
can it be sure that this milk is not watered.” Upstairs climbs 
Nanny, if need be to the topmost storey, her owner professing 
