HISTORICAL 21 



by ancient people more generally as a remedy than as food. It 

 was a common excipient for ointments. In Spain in the seven- 

 teenth century butter was sold by apothecaries for external use 

 only. Even at present fresh unsalted butter is applied as a relief 

 for burns, and in England and Scotland large quantities are used 

 for smearing sheep. This is done to combat skin diseases, destroy 

 vermin, and give protection against dampness and cold. 



Caesar reported that the Germans used only milk, cheese, and 

 meat for food, and Tacitus stated that their food consisted chiefly 

 of fruit, fresh game, and loppered milk. Butter was not men- 

 tioned. At the same time the inhabitants of Britain used meat 

 and milk, and in spite of a liberal supply of milk did not know how 

 to make cheese. Pliny wrote of the Friesians as living on milk 

 and stated that they knew little of cheese and butter making. 

 Still, the Friesians later practised dairy methods which for a time 

 were the most advanced in Europe. Such accounts, of course, do 

 not exclude the possibility that butter and cheese were known, 

 but their use was so limited as to escape observation. 



In France, about 600 A. D., butter was included in the dishes 

 of the rich, but was rather difficult to obtain. In Norway that 

 commodity was commonly included in the larder of outgoing ves- 

 sels as early as the eighth century. Butter became an important 

 article of commerce in Scandinavia in the twelfth century, and the 

 Germans would travel to Bergen to exchange wine for butter and 

 dried fish. In Norway the trade in butter was highly developed 

 at the end of the thirteenth century, a fact that points to the 

 assumption that butter must have been known in Norway in very 

 ancient times. In the fourteenth century butter was extensively 

 made in Prussia. In England the dairy industry began to develop 

 about this time, but butter was used only exceptionally even in the 

 sixteenth century. 



Pallas, in 1776, described butter making by Mongolian Kal- 

 mucks, who used cow's or sheep's milk and boiled it before churn- 

 ing. The boiled milk was inoculated with sour milk and churned 

 within twenty-four hours. It was thus preserved in leather bags, 

 which were never washed. Their churns were made of leather. 

 Thus we see that the method of making butter from heated milk, 

 with the addition of a natural starter, is really an old process. 

 The Tartars on West Siberia made a fermented milk and distilled 

 an intoxicating beverage from it which resembled brandy. In 

 Italy butter making was always of less importance than cheese 

 making. In 1891 Italy produced 68,700,000 kilograms of cheese, 

 against 16,700,000 kilograms of butter. 



The earliest forms of churns consisted simply of vessels in 

 which the cream was beaten with club-shaped sticks; or sticks 



