158 MORE POT-POURRI 



about jaundice or skin eruptions and other allied troubles. 

 Some such experience must have led to our custom of 

 taking Apple sauce with roast pork, rich goose, and like 

 dishes. The malic acid of ripe Apples, either raw or 

 cooked, will neutralise any excess of chalky matter 

 engendered by eating too much meat. It is also the fact 

 that such fresh fruit as the Apple, the Pear, the Plum, 

 when taken ripe and without sugar, diminish acidity in the 

 stomach, rather than provoke it. Their vegetable salts 

 and juices are converted into alkaline carbonates, which 

 tend to counteract acidity. A ripe, raw Apple is one of 

 the easiest vegetable substances for the stomach to deal 

 with, the whole process of its digestion being completed 

 in eighty-five minutes. Gerarde found that the " pulpe 

 of roasted Apples mixed in a wine quart of faire water, 

 and labored together until it comes to be as Apples and 

 ale which we call lambes-wool never faileth in certain 

 diseases of the raines, which myself hath often proved, 

 and gained thereby both crownes and credit. The paring 

 of an Apple cut somewhat thick, and the inside whereof 

 is laid to hot, burning, or running eyes at night, when the 

 party goes to bed, and is tied or bound to the same, doth 

 help the trouble very speedily, and contrary to expecta- 

 tion an excellent secret." 



Many people must have asked themselves how, in the 

 old days long ago, before the Potato came from America, 

 even the sparse population of Ireland fed itself. I feel 

 no doubt that the good monks who brought the art of 

 illuminating and of making the lovely old carved crosses, 

 also grew their vegetables, and did not find the climate 

 unfavourable. Probably, however, no other vegetable 

 will ever now take the place, as an article of food, of the 

 much-loved Potato ; nor is this in any way to be desired. 

 Curiously enough, the other day a great London physician 

 remarked to me, quite independently of Ireland and its 



