PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 531 



derrlutition in the mouth : next in the stomach where it meets 

 the gastric juice, &c. The subsequent operations by which the 

 system is built up, are not chemical and not to be explained on 

 chemical principles. No rule can be of general application. 

 Cooking is best when it meets the individual tastes ; it is useful 

 as it pleases. Kentuckians live on fried bread ; Digger Indians 

 live on grasshoppers. In Southern Europe and in South America 

 they fry vegetables in olive oil, but many Spaniards eschew oil 

 not rancid, and Esquimaux eat train oil. These examples show 

 that whether food is cooked or not, or how it is prepared matters 

 little, provided it agrees with us. Thirty years ago one Graham 

 rode a hol>by day and night ; it was bran bread. Many rode the 

 same hobby, and would cure all diseases by it, but there was 

 always something te help it.* Bran bread was a spur to the ner- 

 vous membrane, and as such sometimes did good. Where the 

 food is too liquid the rectum is contracted, and bran or sawdust 

 is useful to distend it. So when the contrary takes place, there 

 will be dyspepsia, perhaps scrofula ; in that case the bran bread 

 is injurious, and sometimes produces constipation of the bowels. 

 He adduced these instances to show that theories are good when 

 rightly applied. The cob-mill mania years ago killed many horses, 

 notwithstanding the great authorities who approved it. Yet for 

 all this, good cooking is essential to health, but each is the best 

 judge of the cooking that suits him. Starch, sugar, alcohol are 

 brakes in the human locomotive. We live too fast, faster than 

 the usual quantity of food can supply the waste, hence we must 

 have something that will restore the consumption of the tissues 

 until nutriment can be supplied. The negative effect of these 

 articles is seemingly equivalent to the positive effect of nutritive 

 food. 



I do not mean that the bran should be very coarse ; it should 

 be pleasant to the taste. He had eaten sawdust, but did not find 

 it really useful ; it tended to cultivate a torpid, not a vigorous 

 life. Sugar, tobacco and other articles of the kind are good for 

 unemployed men, to make them contented. 



Oysters were in certain circumstances highly nutritious, yet 

 were little more than jelly. Some shell fish are tough, and the 

 toughest were really the best ; but at times the stomach cannot 



* Tlie husk of the wheat, which is separated by the bolt from superfine flour, con- 

 tains the greater part of the phosphates and sulphates, to which the superiority of 

 ■wheat over other "rains, as a food for man. is in a measure due. — J. R 



