. Arrowroot is another grand de- pendence of the nurse. To mix the patient's wine in, being, as it is, quickly prepared, it is aU 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. SIC (873) SIC ' ' Again, milk and the preparations of milk arc a- most important articles of food for the sick. Butter is the lightest kind of animal fat, and though it wants some of the things 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, rice, barley, and their kind, are, as we have already said, prefer- able in all their preparations to all the prepara- tions of arrowroot, sago, tapioca, and their kind. Cream, in many long chronic diseases, is quite irreplaceable by any other article what- ever. It seems to act in the same manner as beef-tea, and to most people it is much easier of digestion than milk ; in fact, it seldom dis- agrees. Cheese is not so usually digestible by the sick, but it has great nourishment in it ; and I have seen sick, and not a few either, whose craving for cheese showed how much it was needed by them. " But if fresh milk is so valuable a food for the sick, the least change or sourness in it makes it of all articles, perhaps, the most in- jurious ; diarrhcea is a common result of fresh milk allowed to become at all sour. The nurse, therefore, ought to exercise her utmost care in this. Buttermilk, a totally different thing, is often very useful, especially in fevers. " Almost all patients in England, young and old, male and female, rich and poor, hos2:)ital and private, dislike sweet things ; and while I have never known a j^crson take to sweets when he was ill who disliked them when he was well, I have known many fond of them when in health who in sickness would leave off every- thing sweet, even to sugar in tea ; sweet pud- dings, sweet drinks are their aversion; the furred tongue almost always likes what is sharp or pungent. Scorbutic patients are an exception ; they often crave for sweetmeats and jams. "Jelly is another article of diet in great favour with nurses and friends of the sick. Even if it could be eaten solid it would not nourish ; but it is simply the height of folly to take an eighth of an ounce of gelatine, and make it into a certain bulk by dissolving it in water, and then give it to the sick, as if the mere bulk represented nourishment. It is now known that jolly does not nourish, that it has a tendency to produce diarrhcea, and to trust to it to repair the waste of a diseased constitution is simply to starve the sick under pretence of feeding them. If one hundred spoonfuls of jelly were given in the course of the daj-, you would have given one spoonful of gelatine, which spoonful has no nutritive power what- ever. "Dr. Christian says 'that every one will be struck with the readiness with which certain classes of patients will often take diluted meat- juice or beef tea repeatedly when they refuse all other kinds of food. This is particularly remarkable in cases of gastric fever, in which,' he says, ' little or nothing else besides beef tea or diluted meat-juice has been taken for weeks or even months, and yet a pint of beef tea contains scarcely a quai-ter of an ounce of anj'thing but water.'

AI-modernized reading of the original text

. Arrowroot is another grand dependence of the nurse. To mix the patient's wine in, being, as it is, quickly prepared, it is aU 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. SIC (873) SIC ' ' Again, milk and the preparations of milk arc a- most important articles of food for the sick. Butter is the lightest kind of animal fat, and though it wants some of the things 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, rice, barley, and their kind, are, as we have already said, preferable in all their preparations to all the preparations of arrowroot, 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 people it is much easier of digestion than milk ; in fact, it seldom disagrees. Cheese is not so usually digestible by the sick, but it has great nourishment in it ; and I have seen sick, and not a few either, whose craving for cheese showed how much it was needed by them. " But if fresh milk is so valuable a food for the sick, the least change or sourness in it makes it of all articles, perhaps, the most injurious ; diarrhcea is a common result of fresh milk allowed to become at all sour. The nurse, therefore, ought to exercise her utmost care in this. Buttermilk, a totally different thing, is often very useful, especially in fevers. " Almost all patients in England, young and old, male and female, rich and poor, hospital and private, dislike sweet things ; and while I have never known a person take to sweets when he was ill who disliked them when he was well, I have known many fond of them when in health who in sickness would leave off everything sweet, even to sugar in tea ; sweet puddings, sweet drinks are their aversion; the furred tongue almost always likes what is sharp or pungent. Scorbutic patients are an exception ; they often crave for sweetmeats and jams. "Jelly is another article of diet in great favour with nurses and friends of the sick. Even if it could be eaten solid it would not nourish ; but it is simply the height of folly to take an eighth of an ounce of gelatine, and make it into a certain bulk by dissolving it in water, and then give it to the sick, as if the mere bulk represented nourishment. It is now known that jolly does not nourish, that it has a tendency to produce diarrhcea, and to trust to it to repair the waste of a diseased constitution is simply to starve the sick under pretence of feeding them. If one hundred spoonfuls of jelly were given in the course of the daj-, you would have given one spoonful of gelatine, which spoonful has no nutritive power whatever. "Dr. Christian says 'that every one will be struck with the readiness with which certain classes of patients will often take diluted meatjuice or beef tea repeatedly when they refuse all other kinds of food. This is particularly remarkable in cases of gastric fever, in which,' he says, ' little or nothing else besides beef tea or diluted meat-juice has been taken for weeks or even months, and yet a pint of beef tea contains scarcely a quarter of an ounce of anj'thing but water.'

Cassell's dictionary of cookery