May 24, 19 1 7] 



NATURE 



-'DO 



the year, as these may be had before goosberries are 

 large enough for that purpose. These footstalks 

 must have their outer skin peel'd off, otherwise they 

 will be very stringy : when this is done, the pulpy 

 part will bake very tender, and almost as clear as the 

 apricot ; and having an agreeable acid flavour, is by 

 many persons esteemed for this purpose." 



Rheum Rhaponticuni has been cultivated in the 

 neighbourhood' of Banbury, mainly for the sake of its 

 root, since about the year 1777. W. Bigg, writing 

 in 1846 {Pharm. Journ., vol. vi., p. 75) on its cultiva- 

 tion there, said: — "Of the leaves, I believe no use 

 is now made, except the use common to all vegetable 

 offal — manuring. The leaf-stalks are now very parti- 

 ally sold for the table. In former years, the sale- of 

 the leaf-stalks formed a part of the trade, but it can 

 scarcely be said to do so now. Wine has been occa- 

 sionally made of them, but not to any important 

 extent. . . . The leaves were some years ago in de- 

 mand (I have reason to think) for the adulteration of 

 tobacco, or the manufacture of cigars, but are not 

 at present." 



It is stated in Loudon's Gardeners' Magazine, vol. 

 vii., 183 1, p. 369, that poor people in the neighbour- 

 hood of Glasgow were in" the habit of using rhubarb- 

 leaves as a remedy for, or for the relief of, 

 rheumatism. Heated leaves were applied to the parts 

 affected. 



If there was anything like a general' appreciation of 

 rhubarb as a substitute for fruit about the middle 

 of the eighteenth century it must haye declined so 

 much in favour as to have been little used at the 

 beginning of the nineteenth, for it is recorded that 

 Mr. Joseph Myatt, of Deptford, about the year 1810, 

 sent his two sons to the Borough Market with five 

 bunches of rhubarb, and of these they succeeded in 

 selling only three. But he persevered in his efforts 

 to make a market for the vegetable, raised improved 

 varieties, and before many years had elapsed rhubarb 

 as a culinan,- plant was established in public favour. 

 According to Loudon's Gardeners' Magazine, vol. iv., 

 o 245, at the beginning of June, 1828, the demand 

 for rhubarb in the Newcastle-upon-Tyne market was 

 so considerable that. 100 sticks sold for 55. In 1831 

 (loc. cit., vol. vii., p. 682) the culture of tart-rhubarb 

 had increased t^o rapidly about Edinburgh that one 

 grower for the market, who a few years before found 

 great difficultv in selling forty or fifty dozens of 

 bunches of stalks in a morning, sold from three to 

 four hundred dozens of bunches. The common price 

 of tart-rhubarb in the Edinburgh market at that time 

 was 2d. a bunch of a dozen stalks, while in Glasgow 

 the same quantity was sold for 3d. 



We are informed that Myatt obtained his first roots 

 from Isaac Oldaker, gardener to Sir Joseph Banks, 

 and Oldaker had brought them from St. Petersburg, 

 having been gardener to the Emperor of Russia. They 

 represented a finer and earlier kind than those pre- 

 viously cultivated in English gardens. 



Several papers in the Transactions of the Horticul- 

 tural Society of London show that in the second and 

 third decades of last century a great deal of attention 

 was paid to the forcing and blanching of rhubarb. 

 In 1824 Mr. James Smith, gardener at Hopetoun 

 House, was awarded the society's silver medal for 

 devising a simple, effectual, and economical mode of 

 forcing the plant. It appears that the method of 

 blanching was discovered by accident in the Chelsea 

 Physic Garden in 1815 (Trans. Hort. Soc. Lond., 

 vol. ii., p. 258). 



It was long ago realised that the use of rhubarb 

 as food was attended with some risk to health. Lind- 

 ley ("Veeetable Kingdom," 1846. p. 503) remarked 

 that oxalic acid is copiously formed in both docks and 

 rhubarbs, and that the latter also contain an abund- 

 NO. 2482, VOL. 99] 



ance of nitric and malic acids. While these give an 

 agreeable taste to the stalks of rhubarb when cooked, 

 ho regarded them as be'ng ill-suited to the digestion 

 of some p>ersons. The "Penny Cyclopaedia," 1841, 

 warned persons subject to calculous complaints against 

 eating tarts made from rhubarb leaf-stalks, owing to 

 the presence of oxalrc acid, and that "the formation 

 of the oxalate of lime, or mulberry calculus, may be 

 the consequence of indulgence." 



A note in the Gardeners' Chronicle, 1846, p. 5, b\ 

 Alexander Forsyth, who was gardener to the Earl of 

 Shrewsbury at Alton Towers, Staffordshire, has been 

 recently referred to in newspapers as showing that 

 rhubarb-leaves were in use about that lime for culinary 

 purposes. Forsyth wrote: — "We have been in the 

 habit of eating the leaves of the rhubarb-plant for 

 many years,' and seeing that the fruit-stalks of this 

 vegetable were counted as waste, I thought it v&ry 

 likely that they were the better part of the plant, and 

 I now find that the pouches of unopened flowers bear 

 the same relation to the leaves of rhubarb that cauli- 

 flowers do to cabbage-leaves, and may be obtained in 

 great abundance, and that at a time (April) when all 

 kinds of vegetables are valuable." He refers to using 

 the young inflorescence, which he called Rhaflower, 

 "as a boiled vegetable, to be used like broccoli." The 

 meaning of his statement about eating the leaves of 

 rhubarb was not clear then, but in a subsequent note 

 {Gardeners' Chronicle, 1847, p. 325) there is no doubt 

 at all that by leaves he meant the leaf-stalks, and not the 

 blades, for he wrote : — " I have no experience in the 

 eating of the leaves, and think them nauseous to the 

 taste and unpleasant to the smell, and it seldom 

 nappens that any article is good for food when all 

 the three senses of sight, taste, and smell reject it; 

 it is not a good green colour. I tasted them boiled, 

 and they did not appear to me to have one redeeming 

 quality to keep them an instant from the dung-heap." 

 In the latter note Forsyth again referred to eating 

 the cooked flower-heads of rhubarb, and stated that he 

 and others had done so without exf>eriencing any ill- 

 effects. But he directed attention to the fact that 

 during the season (spring, 1847) there was a general 

 complaint against the eating of the stalks of rhubarb- 

 leaves, as violent relaxation had resulted. Another 

 correspondent to the Gardeners' Chronicle (1847, 

 p. 325) suggested that illness from eating rhubarb — 

 apparently he meant the inflorescence — mav have been 

 due to the variety', and stated that a medical man 

 whom he knew had a plant of rhubarb in his garden 

 which was particularly early, and which, used rn 

 tarts, invariably caused illness in those who ate it, 

 while other plants growing in the same bed, but which 

 were a little later, were quite wholesome. The same 

 effects had been observed for several years, until at 

 length he destroyed the- offending plant. 



A reference to the Gardeners' Chronicle (1847, 

 pp. 283. 341, 357) will show the varying results of 

 eating the young inflorescence, producing no ill-effects 

 in some cases and serious illness in others ; and in the 

 same journal (1847, p. 283) a case is recorded of a 

 Chelsea woman who boiled rhubarb-leaves as a sub- 

 stitute for spinach, and all three of tliose who ate of 

 the dish were attacked with sickness, one of them, a 

 boy, being also afflicted with swellings about the 

 mouth. An editorial comment on this runs as 

 follows : — "We are not aware of any similar instances 

 of serious consequences following the use of rhubarb, 

 but it is by no means surprising that a plant which 

 forms so much oxalic acid should be unsafe, and we 

 recommend the subject to serious chemical inquiry. 

 It is quite conceivable that the leaves should contain 

 some principle which the stalks are deficient in, as 

 indeed is proved by the different manner in which the 

 juice of the leaf-stalks and leaves is affected by the 



