milk
before it is become sour. Whey is the least nutritive and easiest of
digestion. And in the spring of the year, when the cows feed on young
grass, it contains so much of vegetable properties, as to become a salutary
potation, when drank to about a pint every morning to those, who during the
winter have taken too little vegetable nourishment, and who are thence
liable to bilious concretions.

3. Cheese is of various kinds, according to the greater or less quantity of
cream, which it contains, and according to its age. Those cheeses, which
are easiest broken to pieces in the mouth, are generally easiest of
digestion, and contain most nutriment. Some kinds of cheese, though slow of
digestion, are also slow in changing by chemical processes in the stomach,
and therefore will frequently agree well with those, who have a weak
digestion; as I have seen toasted cheese vomited up a whole day after it
was eaten without having undergone any apparent change, or given any
uneasiness to the patient. It is probable a portion of sugar, or of animal
fat, or of the gravy of boiled or roasted meat, mixed with cheese at the
time of making it, might add to its pleasant and nutritious quality.

4. The reason, why autumnal milk is so much thicker or coagulable than
vernal milk, is not easy to understand, but as new milk is in many respects
similar to chyle, it may be considered as food already in part digested by
the animal it is taken from, and thence supplies a nutriment of easy
digestion. But as it requires to be curdled by the gastric acid, before it
can enter the lacteals, as is seen in the stomachs of calves, it seems more
suitable to children, whose stomachs abound more with acidity, than to
adults; but nevertheless supplies good nourishment to many of the latter,
and particularly to those, who use vegetable food, and whose stomachs have
not been much accustomed to the unnatural stimulus of spice, salt, and
spirit. See Class I. 1. 2. 5.

III. 1. The seeds, roots, leaves, and fruits of plants, constitute the
greatest part of the food of mankind; the respective quantities of
nourishment, which these contain, may perhaps be estimated from the
quantity of starch, or of sugar, they can be made to produce: in
farinaceous seeds, the mucilage seems gradually to be converted into
starch, while they remain in our granaries; and the starch by the
germination of the young plant, as in making malt from barley, or by animal
digestion, is conv