464 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
and meets the pyroligneous acid, so that each being hot, they 
chemically unite, and a gas is produced which permeates the 
meat, or fish, as it were “curing” the substance, and imbuing 
it with an appetizing taste, and relish. The food cooked in this 
way becomes immediately converted within the stomach and 
intestines into chyle, and is readily digested. By which plan 
oily fish which would be otherwise difficult of digestion, and 
would cause distress, also roast pork, and the like, become readily 
digestible ; but of fish only the oily sorts can be planked in cook- 
ing, whilst nearly all kinds of meat are improved by the process. 
Ordinary meat-gravy furnishes nearly 50 per cent of uric 
acid. During continued fever there is a rapid waste of nitro- 
genous elements of the bodily structures, such as would in health 
be best restored by lean meat, and proteids of a like sort. But 
under such conditions of illness these are not admissible, and 
“it is better,” as Dr. Hutchison teaches, to give then the proteid- 
sparers, such as gelatin, the carbohydrates, and fats, than to 
encumber the body, and tire the digestive energies with any 
free supply of proteids themselves. ‘ Milk should always form 
the basis of fever diet ; about four pints in the day will generally 
be sufficient, either given plain, or diluted with some alkaline 
effervescing water. I{ seeming to be needed, one or two 
teaspoontuls of milk sugar, dissolved in a little hot water, may 
be added to each tumblerful of the milk. Beef-tea, or simple 
broths, may also be allowed, about a pint a day, except when 
diarrhoea is present.” No patient with chronic kidney disease 
should make use as food of beef-tea, or bouillon, or the so-called 
beef extracts. These substances are concentrated solutions 
of salts identically the same as those which go to form the urine 
itself, in addition to some albumin; whereby the kidneys are 
already overworked, seeing that the blood is surcharged with 
these toxic products. A milk diet will be the proper course to 
adopt, diluted or skim milk being preferred, wherein the 
proportion of helpful proteid remains undiminished, and the 
harmless fat is retained. 
Stewing is in many respects the ideal method for cooking 
meat: it coagulates the proteids without hardening the fibrous 
tissues. As concerning these proteids (superlative sustenance 
for restoring nervous power, and repairing muscular loss of 
substance) lean beef contains, roughly speaking, twice as much 
as wheat flour; but beef is about four times as dear as flour; 
