OAT. 11 



lower classes of this hardy people, before 

 the potatoe root was so general in the north. 

 Tusser observes, that, 



" Each soil hath not liking of euery grain, 

 nor barlie and wheat for euery vain : 

 Yet know I no country, so barren of soil, 



but some kind of corn may be gotton with toil." 



Gerard writes in 1597, that " common otes 

 is called Vesca, d vescendo, because it is vsed 

 in many countries to make sundry sorts of 

 bread, as in Lancashire, where it is their 

 chiefest bread-corne, for jannocks, hauer- 

 cakes, tharffe cakes, and those which are 

 called generally oten cakes ; and for the most 

 part they call the graine Hauer, whereof they 

 do likewise make drink for want of barley." 



Physicians have formerly greatly recom- 

 mended a diet-drink made of oats, on which 

 Dr. Lower, and the celebrated Hoffman, 

 wrote a treatise about the end of the seven- 

 teenth century. The inventor of this drink, 

 Joannes de St. Catherine, is said to have kept 

 himself alive by it to the age of an hundred 

 and twenty years without disease. 



The prescriptions of modern physicians 

 are often found to be almost in opposition to 

 those of former times ; which we may at- 



