618 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
at meals. This habit is probably dependent on the elaborate 
preparation, and cooking to which the food is subjected. In 
the manipulation of wheat for flour the grain is deprived of its 
outer coating, or bran, which contains the larger part of the 
saline matters of the wheat. Potatoes, and green vegetables, 
are boiled in an excessive quantity of water, and thereby the 
saline ingredients are washed out. Meat, and fish are boiled, 
or roasted, and in these ways lose some of their mineral constitu- 
ents. Salt must therefore be supplied artificially to make up 
the defect, and to restore to the food so treated, that sapidity, 
and salinity of which it has been in part deprived.” Which 
cogent reason probably originated the old German proverb, 
“* Saltz und brot machen backen roth ”’—‘* Salt, and bread make 
the cheeks red.” But the addition of some moderate Salt to 
the water when boiling meat is quite desirable, having a three-fold 
action: First, it immediately causes a coagulation of the outside 
surface of the meat, so that the inner juices are sealed up, and 
retained ; secondly, it slightly raises the boiling point of the 
water; and, thirdly, by increasing the density of the water 
the exosmosis, or oozing out, of the sapid juices from within 
the meat is less active. 
“The finny treasures of the deep, 
The flocks which climb the mountain steep, 
All food spread over plains, and lea, 
Without some Salt would tasteless be.” 
Whilst the lean of meats is rendered less digestible by salting, 
the reverse is true of the fat; hence it happens that the fat of 
broiled, or cold, boiled bacon is notably easy of digestion. 
Various special uses of table Salt as a curative medicine have 
been explained previously in Kitchen Physic, as antiseptic, and 
chemically alterative against gout, whilst specifically curative 
in minute doses for a sneezing catarrh, preventive of chronic 
constipation, also of migraine, dispelling melancholy, and 
exterminating thread-worms. These several topics need not 
be reconsidered here. The noted old Lord Chesterfield, in his 
letters to his son, then at Basle (November, 1766), wrote: 
“J had been dangerously ill of a fever in Holland during 1782, 
and when I was recovered of it, the febrific humour fell into my 
legs, and swelled them to that degree, and chiefly in the evening, 
that it was as painful to me as it was shocking to others. I came 
to England with them in this condition, and consulted Mead, 
