GRUEL. 357 
vinegar, or lemon juice, in drinks, medicines, and sauces. The 
human stomach will tolerate acids which are comparatively 
strong, even of a mineral sort, and these not presently becoming 
alkaline as the vegetable acids do by chemical change. Drs. 
Gould and Pyle record a case (Curiosities of Medicine, 1901) of 
““a bootmaker who constantly took half an ounce of strong 
sulphuric acid (oil of vitriol) in a tumbler of water, saying that 
it relieved his dyspepsia, and kept his bowels open”; of course 
this was a most exceptional immunity, and a strange power of 
resistance. 
GRUEL. 
In primitive Britain the cereal, and leguminous foods were 
originally eaten unshelled, and uncooked, as testified by the 
extremely ground-down state of our early ancestors’ teeth, and 
those of the pre-Saxon inhabitants. But meanwhile in more 
civilized Gaul these foods were advanced to the state of being 
pounded by stones, and in mortars, so as to make a sort of mass 
with water, or milk,—the primitive Gruel. ‘‘ Rome,” said Cato 
of Utica, “was raised upon Gruel.” Later on in mid-English 
times Gruel was groat ale, or oatmeal soup, made with malt 
liquor instead of water, and then rendered in base Latin gruellum, 
from grutellum, a diminutive of grutum, meal; so oatmeal, 
grits, groats. Grout, similarly, was a quondam Danish dish, and 
it is still claimed as an honour by a certain old Danish family to 
carry a platter thereof at a Royal Coronation :— 
“ King Hardyknute, midst Danes, and Saxons stout, 
Caroused on nut-brown ale, and dined on grout, 
Which dish its pristine honour still orang. ; 
And when each prince is crowned in splendour reigns.’ 
r Art of Cookery (1708). 
Again, the True Gentlewoman’s Delight (1653) taught how “ to 
make Grout”: ‘‘ Take some wheat, and beanes, and when you 
have made it into malt, then tittle it; then take some water, 
or some small wort, and heat it scalding hot, and put it.into a 
pail; then stir in the malt; then take a piece of sower leaven ; 
then stir it about, and cover it, and let it stand till it will cream, 
then put in some orange pills (peels ?), then put it over the fire, 
and boil it, keeping it stirring till all the white be gone. Nowa- 
days Gruel is an invalid preparation for weakly persons of 
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