544 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
has been said to show that lemon-juice does not produce 
its lethal effect upon typhoid germs until after at least twenty 
hours have elapsed ; which fact, if it be such, disposes of the 
idea that a consumer of Oysters safeguards himself against 
typhoid infection therefrom, even if he eats a whole lemon 
with each Oyster”’; thus reasons The Table, February, 1903. 
The poet Hood, in his humorous tale of Miss Kilmansegg, and 
her Golden Leg, sings incidentally thus :— 
** What different fates our stars accord ! 
One babe is welcomed, and wooed as a lord, 
Another is shunned like a leper ; 
One to the world’s wine, and honey, and corn, 
Another, like Colchester native, is born 
To its vinegar only, and pepper.” 
** Scarcely one man in a thousand,” says the Rev. J. G. Wood, 
“knows how to open an Oyster, and still less, how to eat it; 
the usual method of the Oyster-shops is radically wrong, whereby 
all the juice is lost, and the Oyster is left to become dry, and 
insipid on the flat shell; this being slightly convex inside, 
effectually answers to drain off the liquor, (the same being to the 
Oyster what milk is to the cocoanut). There is as much 
difference between an Oyster properly opened, and eaten before 
its aroma has had time to escape, as between champagne frothy, 
and leaping out of the silver-necked bottle, and the same wine 
after it has been allowed to stand six hours with the cork 
removed.” When an Oyster is opened, it is possible on a careful 
examination to see the heart beating, almost as strongly as it 
did before the operation was performed. Though the Oyster 
has neither eyes, nor ears, yet if you let the shadow of your hand 
fall on his shell when permitted to be open, it will be instantly 
closed up, such is his sensitiveness; and his intelligence is of 
the same order. He lies on the bulged shell (which is concave 
within), and it is supposed when he happens to have this shell 
uppermost he cannot unclose his shell ; so in frosty weather (an 
Oyster hates frost) he manages to keep the flatter side of the 
shell undermost, and runs no risk of opening, and thus letting 
the ice-cold water chill his delicate organization; but to turn 
Over again is not an easy matter, and gives Mr. Oyster some 
little trouble in the way of manceuvring. ‘“‘ Wery good power 
o’ suction, Sammy, you’ve got,” said Mr. Weller, Senior (in 
_ Pickwick), looking into the pot of ale when his firstborn took 
