6 



metrical and musical improvements (particularly the musical scale), 

 and the art of cookery. 



VVe are now beginning to get upon the safe ground of a book on 

 the subject, the Aenrvo(ro<f>ia-Tal, (Deipnosophistae), or T/ie Banquet 

 of the Learned, by Athenaeus the grammarian. This book is a 

 collection of ana, or anecdotes, on all sorts of things, particularly 

 Gastronomy, and is put fortli by Athenseus as a full account of 

 the conversation at a banquet at Rome, at which he, Galen the 

 physician, and Ulpian the jurist were among the guests. Only a 

 fragment of the book has come down to us : it is our authority for 

 the high fame to which the Lydian cooks had attained. Athengeus 

 also preserves for us the names of several writers on cookery, 

 whose works, alas ! are lost : he enumerates some seventeen, and 

 these seventeen are not retired hotel-keepers, club-cooks, or old 

 ladies, but doctors — doctors of high degree, such as Erasistratus 

 of Ceos, the most famous anatomist and vivisectionist of his day, 

 a physician second only to Hippocrates. Heraclides, who wrote 

 on Materia Medica, and also wrote a commentary on Hippocrates; 

 Criton of Rome, and Diodes of Eubsea, both distinguished medical 

 writers. Don't let any one be surprised : in both classical and 

 mediaeval times, the arts of cookery and of healing were always 

 considered closely allied. The word curare signifies equally to 

 dress victuals and to cure a distemper. There is a well known 

 Latin adage — 



Culina medicines famulatrix, 

 and another 



Explicit coqtiina que est optima medicina. 



The connection continued to the end of the 17th century. In 

 1684 one Hartman a chemist published in one volume, "A choice 

 collection of Select Remedies for all Distempers incident to Men 

 Women, and Children, together with excellent Directions for 

 Cookery, and also for preserving and conserving." The association 

 of ideas still obtains at sea, and sailors always call their cook the 

 doctor. 



Not even fragments of the culinary works of these writers have 

 come down to us, though some of their medical works have, and 



