Barley Bread has a sweetish but not unpleasant taste; it is, however, rather viscid, and is less nutritive, as well as less digestible, than wheaten bread. It is common to mix peas-meal with the barley, which certainly improves the bread. Rye Bread is of a dark-brown colour, and is apt to lie heavy on the stomach; it is also liable to create acescency and purging: but it appears to be highly nutritive. In some of the interior counties of England, where their bread is often manufactured from oatmeal, there is a mode of preparing the meal by making it sour; the bread, instead of being hard, is thus rendered of a soft texture, and from its moderate acidity is wholesome to strong persons: but invalids should, if possible, avoid it. In bread, however, this grain is more usually in an unfermented state, or it is made into flat, thin cakes, which are baked or roasted. The bannock, clap-bread, bitchiness-bread, and riddle-cakes, are the names which such productions have received. The jannock is oaten bread made into loaves. It is evident, from the health and vigour of the people who use this grain as a principal article of diet, that it must be very nutritive; but the stomach will require some discipline before it can digest it.

In those unaccustomed to such food, it produces heartburn; and it is said to occasion, even in those with whom it agrees, cutaneous affections. In times of scarcity, potatoes have been made into bread; but they contain too much mucilage in proportion to their starch to afford a good article: the bread thus produced is heavy, and apt to crumble into powder; but such effects are obviated by mixing a certain quantity of wheat-flour with the potatoes. Rice will also serve the purpose of making very good bread: but, like the potatoe, it requires the addition of some flour. It is said by some, that bread, made of different kinds of grain, is more wholesome than that made of only one sort, as their qualities serve to correct one another. This is certainly the case with that which is commonly called brown bread, and which is made of a mixture of wheat and rye flour; the former, being of a more starchy nature, is apt to produce cos-tiveness, while the latter often proves too laxative: a due proportion of each, therefore, must furnish a desirable compound.

213. The importance of bread, as an article of diet, will be easily deduced from the principles upon which the digestion of food in the stomach has been already explained. In addition to its nutritive qualities, it performs a mechanical duty of some importance. It serves to divide the food, and to impart a suitable bulk and consistence to it; it is therefore more necessary to conjoin it with articles containing much aliment in a small space, than where the food is both bulky and nutritive. The concentrated cookery of the French is rendered much more wholesome from the large quantity of bread which that people use at their meals. I know from personal experience how greatly this habit can correct the evil which arises from rich soups and ragouts. If I eat a rich soup, without a considerable quantity of stale bread, I inevitably suffer from heartburn; but it never offends my stomach when taken with such precaution. Bread should never be eaten new; in such a state it swells, like a sponge, in the stomach, and proves very indigestible. Care should also be taken to obtain bread that has been duly baked. Unless all its parts are intimately mixed, and the fixed air expelled, it will be apt. in very small quantities, to produce acescency and indigestion.

After stating the advantages of bread, it is necessary to make a few observations upon the evils which it may occasionally produce: in certain diseases it evidently produces a tendency to acidity; we have daily instances of this fact in children, in whom acidity and much alimentary disturbance follow its use. In early life it is scarcely admissible, on account of the flatulence and costiveness which it produces; and even at a more advanced period it gives children a pale countenance, and breeds worms. Shebbeare goes so far as to say, that the rickets are so common in France only because the quantity of bread given to children is excessive; which, by its acidity, destroys the calcareous substance of the bones, and reduces them to a state of cartilage. This is mere idle speculation, which is in direct variance with the received opinions upon the subject. Where acidity occurs, the bread should be toasted, or well-prepared biscuit substituted. I shall have occasion to state, in a subsequent part of this work, that striking changes in the urinary deposits may be produced by suspending the use of bread, and giving biscuit in its place.

214. Bread has also been charged with producing evil consequences, from the presence of noxious principles, either naturally or artificially introduced into it. It will be necessary to direct some attention to these points. The presence of a peculiar poisonous principle, termed ergot, or spurred rye, has frequently proved a source of extensive disease: but as this subject has been ably treated in the various works on Toxicology, it will not be necessary to enter into its history on this occasion. Much has been said and written upon the subject of the adulteration of bread; but I am inclined to believe, that the evils arising from such a practice have been greatly exaggerated. It is certain, that the inferior kinds of flour will not make bread of sufficient whiteness to please the eye of the fastidious citizen, without the addition of a proportion of alum. It has been also found, that unless this salt be introduced into the flour, the loaves stick together in the oven, and will not afterwards separate from each other with that smooth surface which distinguishes the loaf of the baker. This circumstance is probably owing to the action of the alum upon the mucilage of the flour, which it coagulates.

It has been said, that the smallest quantity that can be employed for these purposes is from three to four ounces to two hundred and forty pounds of flour. It cannot be denied, that the introduction of a portion of alum into the human stomach, however small, may be prejudicial to the exercise of its functions, and particularly to dyspeptic invalids. It was found by Mr. E. Davy, of Cork, that bad flour may be made into tolerable bread by adding, to each pound, from twenty to forty grains of the common carbonate of magnesia. The operation of this substance in rendering the bread lighter has not been satisfactorily explained; but from my own experience of its effects, I apprehend that it neutralizes an acid which is pro-duced during the fermentation of inferior flour, and, becoming itself decomposed by the same action, gives out carbonic acid, and thus contributes to the sponginess of the loaf. The addition of salt greatly improves the digestibility of the bread, for reasons which have been already considered.

215. Besides bread, several other preparations are made by the solidification of flour, such as pudding, pancake, etc. The most digestible pudding is that made with bread, or biscuit and boiled flour: batter pudding is not so easily digested; and suet pudding is to be considered as the most mischievous to invalids in the whole catalogue. Pancake is objectionable, on account of the process of frying imparting a greasiness to which the dyspeptic stomach is not often reconciled. All pastry is an abomination: I verily believe, that one half, at least, of the cases of indigestion which occur after dinner-parties may be traced to this cause.

216. Many persons entertain a strange prejudice in favour of pudding, and appear as if they considered it to possess a balsamic virtue, or some property by which the digestion of other aliment is expedited. If ever such a diet has served the valetudinarian, it must have been by excluding less stimulant food, and not by any virtue inherent in the pudding itself. This opinion is well illustrated by the case of the Billericay Miller, whose history must be well known to many of my readers1: this person, by reducing the quantity of his daily food, until at length he took nothing more than a pudding made of sea biscuit, was, to use his own expression, "metamorphosed from a monster to a person of a moderate size; from the condition of an unhealthy, decrepit, old man, to perfect health, and to the vigour and activity of youth." Mr. Wadd, in his work on corpulence, has introduced a very pleasant story, which will serve to complete the illustration of our subject. A gentleman, says he, who was fond of good living, and found himself becoming too corpulent, having heard of the salutary effects of the miller's regimen, ordered his cook to prepare the "miller's pudding" which he ate with great regularity every day, after his usual dinner.

From the above anecdote the sagacious reader will deduce far more than is expressed. Plutarch, in his life of Lycurgus, tells us that one of the kings of Pontus having heard great praises of the black broth of Sparta, hired a cook from that city. But when he came to taste this celebrated dish, he called immediately for his cook, and warmly reproached him for the imposition. "Sir," replied the cook, "to make this broth relish well, a man must bathe himself in the river Eurotas '." - But to return from this digression.

1 Medical Transactions, vol. ii.

217. Amongst the farinaceous aliments, the Potatoe holds a distinguished rank; but its digestibility greatly depends upon its kind, and the nature of the cookery to which it is subjected. That species which is known by the name of waxy potatoe should be shunned by the dyspeptic, for it is so indigestible as to pass through the intestines in an unaltered state. The same objection applies to the young, or new potatoe. The mealy kind more readily yields to the powers of the stomach, and affords a healthy nutriment; in some respects it supplies the place of bread, and should therefore be eaten with freedom whenever our food is concentrated. To the dyspeptic, however, I have generally found this vegetable to be injurious; if ever allowed to such patients, it is worthy of remark that roasting is preferable to every other form of cookery. The process of mashing certainly does not contribute to their digestibility: by such an operation they escape being so intimately mixed with the saliva; and when they are impregnated with the fat of roast meat, they should be studiously avoided. If boiled, care should be taken that they are not over-done; for in such a case, they are deprived of their nutritious qualities.

Under any circumstances, they are apt to accumulate in the colon, and to form indigestible masses in that part of the canal.

1 A river of Laconia, running by Sparta, so that "to bathe in Eurotas," signified to imitate the discipline and temperance of the Lacedemonians.