SCIENTIFIC COOKING. 657 



our part to procure it. We have only not to interfere with what 

 Nature has given by inclosing it in rooms, or by allowing it to be 

 contaminated with noxious gases or other impurities. The second 

 greatest necessity of life is food, which includes water. Food is 

 the raw material of the body from which it constructs its tissues 

 and repairs them as they wear. It furnishes the elements from 

 which are evolved the forces of the body, such as heat, muscular 

 and nervous energy and other powers ; of these, heat is the most 

 important, it being ever required that the constant temperature 

 which the body must always possess to be in a state of health 

 may be maintained. Food also furnishes material for a supply 

 which is stored away in the body for use in emergencies when 

 from accident or other cause nutriment is cut off. 



Food is to the body what fuel is to the fire. It and the oxygen 

 of the air are the agents which maintain the life of the system. 

 What can be more worthy our attention than so important a 

 subject ? 



We all know that some kinds of food are more easily digested 

 than others, and we also know that the same kind of food treated 

 in cooking by different methods varies in digestibility, according 

 to those methods. To illustrate, an egg cooked in such a way 

 that its albumen is coagulated, but tender and jelly-like, not 

 hardened, is a very easily digested food substance ; while an egg 

 cooked at a temperature so high that its albumen is rendered 

 tough and tenacious is very difficult of digestion, and it is known 

 that well persons have been made temporarily ill by eating eggs 

 so cooked. 



What is true of the egg simply illustrates what is true of 

 nearly all food substances that is, that the temperature at which 

 they are cooked and the manner in which they treated, as to the 

 time of exposure to heat and their combination with other things, 

 makes all the difference in their digestibility and flavor. This 

 constitutes our second argument for the study of cooking. 



If only because we have at best but glimmerings of the com- 

 plex, intricate, and mysterious processes of the life of the phys- 

 ical human body, should we strive to maintain it in most perfect 

 condition, and endeavor in the clearest lights of modern science to 

 make it indeed a temple for the indwelling of the mind. 



It is thought by some students of the subject that crime is a 

 disease ; that had the men, who are to-day criminals, been reared 

 under better conditions, of both nourishment for the body and 

 influence for the mind, they might have been worthy, even noble 

 citizens. 



Missionaries, both at home and abroad, are beginning to realize 

 that it is of little use to pray with a man until they have fed him. 

 In fact, the^first work of the missionary of to-day is to provide 



VOL. XLIII.- 



