Volume 1

The family oracle of health, economy, medicine, and good living adapted to all ranks of society, from the palace to the cottage / By F. Crell ... and W. M. Wallace, Esq., assisted by a Committee of scientific gentlemen.

  • Crell, A. F.
Date:
1824-1827
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The family oracle of health, economy, medicine, and good living adapted to all ranks of society, from the palace to the cottage / By F. Crell ... and W. M. Wallace, Esq., assisted by a Committee of scientific gentlemen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    12/516 (page 4)
    The Science of Good Living. of Good Living, which is my inseparable dinner companion— such remarks and memoranda as may be useful to alfwho set a just value on the pleasures of the table, and at the same long life C preSerVati0n °f their heal«b to the latest period of a Botanver70nrnTinff vt ^°US 1 haVe had recourse to ! 5 gy’- >IO Ogy’ and a11 the sciences which bear, diJ ' £Ct yr mdirectly? on the great processes of eating and gestion. I have ransacked libraries for the opinions of the learned, and I have performed innumerable experiments, to satisfy myself of their accuracy. I have sought for the best living authorities, among those who are renowned for their knowledge of dainties and delicacies, both amateurs of for- tune the Apicn, Luculli, and Amphytrions of the age—and the importers of foreign rarities and dealers in the friandises of oui own produce. But withal, I have, as many others have done before me, to lament the weakness and narrow-sighted- ness of human nature, which confines the range of philosophic research within so limited a sphere, and renders our most pro- found knowledge only a sort of respectable ignorance. It will scaicely be believed, and I could not, when I began my re- searches, have anticipated, that Chemistry, which is peculiarly the science of the table, should have so greatly disappointed my hopes; and it is doubtless rather singular, in this age of improvement, when we find so many easy Introductions to Chemistry in every body’s hands—that almost none of them— no . not even the voluminous systems of the science, mention in detail the processes so important to our existence, as the preparation of food and drink. May not this omission have arisen from the wit and ridicule just alluded to, as so often directed against the literature of‘the kitchen and the cellar? And are our systematic Chemists indeed afraid of “ the world’s dread laugh ?” When really, after all, there is nothing so very laughable in preparing the nourishment which we daily want, and cannot dispense with—in preparing it skilfully on scientific- principles, so that it shall prove both savoury to the taste, wholesome to the constitution, and productive of a long and happy life. Though an amateur in all that can delight the appetite, and a bitter enemy to the wicked machinations of water-drinkers and vegetable eaters against the natural comfort and enjoy- ments of the human race—I give no quarter to ignorant and indiscriminate gluttony and pampering; but instead of ridi- cule, I think the propensity to guzzle and cram ought to be met with pity or with stern rebuke. Every body must despise such