662 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
as having said: ‘‘ Doubtless God Almighty could have made a 
better berry, but He never did.” 
Charles Lamb had a sincere admiration of Izaak Walton, and 
the Compleat Angler. In his simple little story of Rosamund 
Gray (who was brought up from early years in a plain manner 
by her blind old grandmother, Margaret Gray), he tells of her 
lovingly thus: ‘I know not whether the peculiar cast of her 
mind might not be traced in part to a tincture she had received 
in early life from Walton, and Wither, from John Bunyan, and 
her Bible. The old-fashioned pictures in Wither’s Emblems 
(an ancient book, and quaint) were among the first exciters of 
the infant Rosamund’s curiosity. But in my catalogue of the 
small library at the cottage, I forgot to mention a Book of Common 
Prayer. Old ladies of Margaret’s stamp (God bless them !) may 
as well be without their spectacles, or their elbow-chair, as their 
Prayer Book. I love them for it! Their Bible might never be 
suffered to lie about like other books, but was kept constantly 
wrapt up in a handsome case of green velvet, with gold tassels, 
as the only relic of departed’ grandeur they had brought with 
them to the cottage.” 
Strawberries were noted of old as “a surprising remedy for 
the jaundice of children, and particularly helping the liver of 
pot companions, wetters, and drammers.” ‘Some also do use 
thereof to make a water for hot inflammations in the eyes, 
and to take away any film that beginneth to grow over them.” 
The chemical constituents of the Strawberry are a peculiar 
volatile aroma, sugar, mucilage, pectin, citric, and malice acids 
in equal parts, woody fibre, and water. The fruit is mucilaginous, 
somewhat tart, and saccharine. It stimulates perspiration, and 
imparts a violet scent to the urine; when purposely fermented 
it will yield an ardent spirit. If beaten into a pulp when ripe, 
and if water be poured thereupon, a capital cooling drink is 
made which is purifying, and somewhat laxative. The presence 
also of salicylic acid in Strawberries has now been definitely 
recognized, this acid being an acknowledged curative specific 
in acute rheumatism. The same acid is present likewise in 
several other fruits, to wit, grapes, apples, plums, cherries, and 
oranges, although its amount is less than one sixty-fourth part 
of a grain per two pounds of fruit. Nature is very gentle in 
her dosing,—more gentle by far than the clumsy mediciner, OT 
food purveyor. Pliny made mention of the Strawberry as one — 
