Value of Vegetables. 1 2 5 



Vegetables, however, in the course of 

 time, really abounded. With the exception 

 of a few, which have been more modernly 

 introduced, the tables of Charles II.'s Eng- 

 lishman and Englishwoman wanted little in 

 this way. 



Their more extensive use in England was 

 attended by the unexpected and beneficent 

 effect of diminishing the ravages of leprosy. 

 This fact was first pointed out by Gilbert 

 White, in his Natural History of Selborne ; 

 and there is little doubt, as I have suggested 

 elsewhere, that the public health of England, 

 and our pecuniary interests also, would be 

 profited by a larger recourse to fish and 

 green food and a more restricted employ- 

 ment of butcher's meat. 



A free resort to vegetables, together with 

 the removal of the necessity for using salt 

 flesh to so great an extent, has also been 

 instrumental in liberating us from a second 

 scourge, the scurvy, for which an English 

 naval surgeon, * in the time of Charles I., was 



* The Surgeon's Mate, or Military and Domestique 



