rtheless there is
a certain reparative quality in it, we do not know what, as there is in
tea;--but it may safely be given in almost any inflammatory disease, and
is as little to be depended upon with the healthy or convalescent where
much nourishment is required. Again, it is an ever ready saw that an egg
is equivalent to a lb. of meat,--whereas it is not at all so. Also, it
is seldom noticed with how many patients, particularly of nervous or
bilious temperament, eggs disagree. All puddings made with eggs, are
distasteful to them in consequence. An egg, whipped up with wine, is
often the only form in which they can take this kind of nourishment.
Again, if the patient has attained to eating meat, it is supposed that
to give him meat is the only thing needful for his recovery; whereas
scorbutic sores have been actually known to appear among sick persons
living in the midst of plenty in England, which could be traced to no
other source than this, viz.: that the nurse, depending on meat alone,
had allowed the patient to be without vegetables for a considerable
time, these latter being so badly cooked that he always left them
untouched. Arrowroot is another grand dependence of the nurse. As a
vehicle for wine, and as a restorative quickly prepared, it is all very
well. But it is nothing but starch and water. Flour is both more
nutritive, and less liable to ferment, and is preferable wherever it can
be used.

[Sidenote: Milk, butter, cream, &c.]

Again, milk and the preparations from milk, are a most important
article of food for the sick. Butter is the lightest kind of animal fat,
and though it wants the sugar and some of the other elements which there
are in milk, yet it is most valuable both in itself and in enabling the
patient to eat more bread. Flour, oats, groats, barley, and their kind,
are as we have already said, preferable in all their preparations to all
the preparations of arrow root, sago, tapioca, and their kind. Cream, in
many long chronic diseases, is quite irreplaceable by any other article
whatever. It seems to act in the same manner as beef tea, and to most it
is much easier of digestion than milk. In fact, it seldom disagrees.
Cheese is not usually digestible by the sick, but it is pure nourishment
for repairing waste; and I have seen sick, and not a few either, whose
craving for cheese shewed how much it was needed by them.[23]

But, if fresh milk is so valuable a food for the sick, the least change