OILS. 521 
Sardines. The abundance of oil, together with incorporated fish- 
products, make Sardines especially suitable for consumptive 
patients, also for diabetic sufferers, and for other wasting illnesses, 
provided the digestive powers do not rebel. The small fish are 
nicest for eating, and are appreciated best by delicate appetites ; 
thus “the lawyer may find a feast in a box of Sardines, with 
some biscuits, while the field labourer would look with contempt 
on such food, and would eagerly turn therefrom to fat pork, and 
cabbage.” “Sardines can supply to the brain-worker the 
material he needs ; likewise the pork and cabbage to the labourer, 
the heat and energy which he expends.” Mr. Dunn, of 
Mevagissey, in Cornwall, first proposed the preparation of 
Sardines in this country, but for a long time they were not very 
popular. Only sixty years ago, a grocer in Brighton had a smail 
quantity on hand for three years, without being able to find a 
purchaser for them. It was ordered in the first London 
Pharmacopeia, 1618, “for use among the poor,” that oil of 
Swallows (Oleum Hirundinum) should be employed externally 
for the cure of rheumatism. This oil was to be made by 
boiling down young Swallows in oil, together with certain herbs, 
wine, and May butter. It was ordained with the hope that 
the stiffened and distorted joints of sufferers would be thus 
made as lithesome as those of the Swallow or Swit. 
Of vegetable Oils, that supplied by the Olive is a capital 
substitute when butter disagrees; it is slightly laxative, and 
being mixed in a salad it obviates flatulency. Castor Oil is a 
favourite adjunct to the Egyptian salads; this was relished taken 
with other foods in the times of the Pharaohs. The oleic acid 
of Olive Oil is a powerful solvent of the feces if injected into the 
lower bowel. Dr. E. Moraweck, of Austria, when asked by an 
English physician, on behalf of a patient suffering from gall- 
stones, what remedy he chiefly used for this trouble, advised 
Olive Oil before all other medicaments. Accordingly a full dose 
thereof was administered, and two days later a handful of 
gall-stones was passed. Genuine Olive Oil is expressed from 
the pulp of the common Olive, being, when fresh and good, an 
inodorous, insipid, pale yellow, or greenish-yellow, viscous liquid, 
unctuous to the feel, inflammable, not capable of combining 
with water, and nearly insoluble in alcohol; it is the lightest 
of all the fixed oils. Virgin oil runs spontaneously from the 
Olive pulp, and is superior to the expressed oil, which is more — 
