‘OYSTER. 541 
defective structures, and to restore exhausted energy to invalids, 
or the sick. It has been extolled for these nutritive qualities 
since the old Roman days of Horace, and Martial, and of the 
Oyster-beds at Bais, which was the Brighton of Rome. Our 
Early English Babee’s Book has told of ‘‘ Oysturs in ceny, Oysturs 
in grauey, your helthe to renew.” And to-day Dr. Philpotts 
(1898) says: “The Oyster is good for the unborn child, good 
for the babe when two years old, good for adolescent youth, 
good for manhood in its maturity, and not only good for, but 
a main strengthener to, old age in its inevitable decay ; it can 
make the sick well, render the healthy more vigorous, prolong 
the shortening days of senility, having imparted an additional 
charm to youth, and beauty.” Again: “ Living Oysters are 
endowed with their proper medicinal virtues: they nourish 
wonderfully, and solicit rest; for he who sups on Oysters is 
wont that night to sleep placidly; and to the valetudinary 
affiicted with a weak stomach, ten or twelve Oysters in the 
morning, or one hour before dinner, are more healing than any 
drug, or mixture that the apothecary can compound.” 
Oysters contain albuminous, gelatinous, and fatty matters, 
muscular filaments, and creatin. One of these molluscs is 
composed, speaking roughly, of water (eighty-five parts), 
organic matter (one and a half parts), with mineral matters, 
and silica (two and three-quarter parts). The Oyster is an 
admirable combination of food, and physic, because of its iodine, 
iron, sulphur, and marine lime salts; the liquor with which it is 
furnished inside the concave shell, when opened, being particularly 
rich in these curative, and restorative constituents. Five years 
are needed for the Oyster to attain its full growth. It consists 
of a hard, and a soft portion; the soft dark-green part is the 
liver, which is very digestible; the hard part is the muscle 
which binds the shells together, and is not so negotiable by 
weakly digestive powers. When Oysters are stewed, or scalloped, 
their albumin is coagulated by the heat, and becomes less easily 
soluble by the gastric juices of the stomach. The beard is the 
branchie, or gills. It has been said that the Oyster digests 
itself, because when the liver is crushed in eating, the hepatic 
cells are set free, and the glycogen is brought into contact with 
the hepatic ferment, thereby digesting the main part of the 
mollusc, with little effort of the stomach on the part of the 
partaker. If this view is correct. an Oyster should be masticated 
