is very healing.

The skin of the tuber contains corky wood which swells in boiling
with the jackets on, and which thus serves to keep in all the juices so
that the digestibility of the Potato is increased; at the same time
water is prevented from entering and spoiling the flavour of the
vegetable. The proportion of muscle-forming food (nitrogen) in the
Potato is very small, and it takes ten and a half pounds of the tubers
to equal one pound of butcher's meat in nutritive value.

The Potato is composed mainly of starch, which [446] affords
animal heat and promotes fatness, The Irish think that these tubers
foster fertility; they prefer them with the jackets on, and somewhat
hard in the middle--"with the bones in." A potato pie is believed to
invigorate the sexual functions.

New Potatoes contain as yet no citric acid, and are hard of digestion,
like sour crude apples; their nutriment, as Gerard says, "is sadly
windy," the starch being immature, and not readily acted on by the
saliva during mastication. "The longer I live," said shrewd Sidney
Smith, "the more I am convinced that half the unhappiness in the
world proceeds from a vexed stomach, or vicious bile: from small
stoppages, or from food pressing in the wrong place. Old
friendships may be destroyed by toasted cheese; and tough salted
meat has led a man not infrequently to suicide."

A mature Potato yields enough citric acid even for commercial
purposes; and there is no better cleaner of silks, cottons, and
woollens, than ripe Potato juice. But even of ripe Potatoes those that
break into a watery meal in the boiling are always found to prove
greatly diuretic, and to much increase the quantity of urine.

By fermentation mature Potatoes, through their starch and sugar,
yield a wine from which may be distilled a Potato spirit, and from it
a volatile oil can be extracted, called by the Germans, _Fuseloel_.
This is nauseous, and causes a heavy headache, with indigestion,
and biliary disorders together with nervous tremors. Chemically it is
amylic ether.

Also when boiled with weak sulphuric acid, the Potato starch is
changed into glucose, or grape sugar, which by fermentation yields
alcohol: and this spirit is often sold under the name of British
brandy.

A luminosity strong enough to enable a bystander to [447] read by
its light issues from the common Potato when in a state of
putrefaction. In Cumberland, to have "taities and point to dinner," is
a figurative