230 LEPROSY. 



inquire for the reason. This happy change, perhaps, may 

 have originated and been continued from the much smaller 

 quantity of salted meat and fish now eaten in these kingdoms 

 from the use of linen next the skin from the plenty of 

 better bread and from the profusion of fruits, roots, 

 legumes, and greens, so common in every family. Three or 

 four centuries ago, before there were any enclosures, sown 

 grasses, field turnips, or field carrots, or hay, all the cattle 

 that had grown fat in summer, and were not killed for 

 winter use, were turned out soon after Michaelmas to shift 

 as they could through the dead months : so that 110 fresh 

 meat could be had in winter or spring. Hence the marvel- 

 lous account of the vast stores of salted flesh found in the 

 larder of the eldest Spencer,* in the days of Edward the 

 Second, even so late in the spring as the 3d of May. It was 

 from magazines like these that the turbulent barons supported 

 in idleness their riotous swarms of retainers, ready for any 

 disorder or mischief. But agriculture has now arrived at 

 such a pitch of perfection, that our best and fattest meats are 

 killed in the winter; and no man needs eat salted flesh, 

 unless he prefer it, that has money to buy fresh. 



One cause of this distemper might be, no doubt, the 

 quantity of wretched fresh and salt fish consumed by the 

 commonalty at all seasons, as well as in Lent, which our 

 poor now would hardly be persuaded to touch. 



The use of linen changes, shifts or shirts, in the room of 

 sordid or filthy woollen, long worn next the skin, is a matter 

 of neatness comparatively modern, but must prove a great 

 means of preventing cutaneous ails. At this very time, 

 woollen instead of linen prevails among the poorer Welsh, 

 who are subject to foul eruptions. 



The plenty of good wheaten bread that now is found 

 among all ranks of people in the south, instead of that miser- 

 able sort which used in old days to be made of barley or 

 beans, may contribute not a little to the sweetening their 

 blood, and correcting their juices ; for the inhabitants of 

 mountainous districts to this day are still liable to the itch 

 and other cutaneous disorders, from a wretchedness and 

 poverty of diet. 



* Tiz. six hundred bacons, eighty carcasses of beef, and six hundred 

 muttons. 



