520 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
sodium. It is of great service as a food likewise in scrofulous 
affections of children, and for banishing all strumous diseases 
of the skin. Only “‘ medicine oil,” as it is termed in Norway, 
should be used, which is extracted reliably from the fresh livers 
which are pressed without stewing; it pertinaciously retains 
a fishy flavour, and (together with some other fish oils) embodies 
a considerable amount of cholesterin, which is a particular 
alcohol concerned in bile-making, (and to be perhaps therefore 
Suggested curatively for restoring glycogen-producing energies 
to the liver in diabetes). This occurs also in the fat of certain 
land animals. 
An agreeable, and at the same time beneficial, form of fish oil, 
as a food, is embodied in the contents of the Sardine box now in 
such general use. Genuine Sardines from the Mediterranean, aS 
imported from Spain, Portugal, and France, are often small 
pilchards (Clupea pilchardus). The Californian Sardine is 
Clupea sagax. These delicate fish must be as fresh as possible 
when first handled ; they are beheaded, and gutted, and allowed 
to remain on wooden slabs overnight after being slightly salted ; 
next day they are salted again, and allowed to dry; they are 
then cooked in olive oil, and put into wire baskets to drip. The 
cooking is a nice process ; if it is overdone the scales come of ; 
five, or six minutes suffice for the cooking. When they have 
become cold the fish are placed on tables to be arranged in boxes 
amid oil dipped from the barrels; this oil is worth more than 
the fish, therefore they are packed as close as possible ; the boxes 
are then soldered down, and they are cooked a second time by 
steam. Small Sardines are the most prized. Occasionally a 
ted coloration of the Sardines preserved in oil may be discovered, 
this being due, it is said, to a chromogenic bacillus which is then 
found in large numbers on these Sardines before preservation : 
it is not at all harmful. Long ago, in the Treatise of Gonzalo 
Oviedo (1535), occurred the record: ‘‘ When the sayd increasyng 
of the sea commeth, there commeth also therewith such @ 
multitude of the smaule fyshes cauled Sardynes that no man 
wolde beleve it that hath not seene it.” The preserved Sardine 
is said to have been brought into fashion by Henry the Fourth ; 
this delicate fish has been termed the ‘“‘ Manna of the sea.” It 
properly prepared, and not with too much salt, the longer the tin 
oi Sardines is kept unopened the more mellow do the fish become. 
Without doubt a good many sprats are put up in tins with oil as 
