418 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
difficult of digestion.” Sheep’s kidneys contain about seventeen 
per cent of albuminates, and two per cent of fat. They may 
be grilled, fried plain, or egg-and-bread-crumbed beforehand. 
Ox kidney, even when thoroughly cooked, requires a good 
mastication, and a strong digestion, having moreover a strong 
flavour of its own. The calf’s kidneys may be minced, and 
braised, going well with a brown sauce. Dr. Haig attributes 
to the sheep’s kidney as food three and a quarter per cent of 
uric acid. Some of the earliest mediciners, with an empirical 
instinct gave donkey’s kidneys for curing diseases of the same 
organs in their human patients; and recent medical science 
justifies such a proceeding, according to the expounded principles 
of curative animal extracts. Lately, in thirty-five sick persons 
labouring under various diseased states of the kidneys, an internal 
administration of fresh, healthy animal kidney in small quantities, 
or of an extract prepared carefully therefrom, has proved of 
undoubted curative value, as faithfully recorded by attendant 
physicians. Urea, and uric acid as eliminated by the kidneys. 
are now proved by many facts to serve protective purposes 
within the human system. These are chiefly products from 
animal foods, and are antagonistic to. the tubercular disposition 
towards consumptive disease of the lungs. But they are favour- 
able to the development of gout, the said two diseases being 
opposed to each other; for the former, it is proper to give a 
liberal allowance of nitrogenous proteids, sweets, fats, butter, 
beer, and the like; but for the latter just the reverse, only a 
little meat, and that principally of the white sort, plain fish, 
fruits, vegetables, and milk foods. It is a known fact that 
vegetarians, and sedentary persons whose tissues are always 
laden with carbonates, are examples of the structures which 
most readily foster consumptive germs, and that these persons 
become materially benefited by increasing their nitrogenous 
nourishment. Furthermore, in gouty conditions it is desirable 
to augment the combustion of the materies morbi by active 
exercise, as Abernethy taught in a practical manner when he 
made his gouty patients dance on hot plates. 
Whereas it has been until within the last few years supposed 
that the sole function of our kidneys is to excrete urine from 
the system, doctors now understand that these organs perform 
another important duty of pouring from themselves important 
matters into the blood, lacking which the general body has ts 
