e struggles of nature, which abhorred the dissolution of soul and
body; no physicians to prescribe for the sick, nor no apothecaries
to compound medicines for two thousand years and upwards. Food and
physick were then one and the same thing.

"But when men began to pass from a vegetable to an animal diet, and
feed on flesh, fowls, and fish, then seasonings grew necessary, both
to render it more palatable and savoury, and also to preserve that
part which was not immediately spent from stinking and corruption: and
probably salt was the first seasoning discover'd; for of salt we read,
Gen. xiv.

"And this seems to be necessary, especially for those who were
advanced in age, whose palates, with their bodies, had lost their
vigour as to taste, whose digestive faculty grew weak and impotent;
and thence proceeded the use of soops and savoury messes; so that
cookery then began to become a science, though luxury had not brought
it to the height of an art. Thus we read, that Jacob made such
palatable pottage, that Esau purchased a mess of it at the extravagant
price of his birthright. And Isaac, before by his last will and
testament he bequeathed his blessing to his son Esau, required him
to make some savoury meat, such as his soul loved, i.e., such as was
relishable to his blunted palate.

"So that seasonings of some sort were then in use; though whether
they were salt, savoury herbs, or roots only; or spices, the fruits
of trees, such as pepper, cloves, nutmeg; bark, as cinnamon; roots, as
ginger, &c., I shall not determine.

"As for the methods of the cookery of those times, boiling or stewing
seems to have been the principal; broiling or roasting the next;
besides which, I presume scarce any other were used for two thousand
years and more; for I remember no other in the history of Genesis.

"That Esau was the first cook, I shall not presume to assert; for
Abraham gave order to dress a fatted calf; but Esau is the first
person mentioned that made any advances beyond plain dressing, as
boiling, roasting, &c. For though we find indeed, that Rebecca his
mother was accomplished with the skill of making savoury meat as
well as he, yet whether he learned it from her, or she from him, is a
question too knotty for me to determine.

"But cookery did not long remain a simple science, or a bare piece
of housewifry or family ceconomy, but in process of time, when luxury
entered the world, it grew to an art, nay a trade; for in I Sa