Soyer's Culinary Campaign: Being Historical Reminiscences of the Late War.: With The Plain Art of Cookery for Military and Civil Institutions

to start. Miss Nightingale was at this period gradually recovering, and the time for her departure drew near. That lady and Mr. Bracebridge had both expressed their wish for me to return to Scutari with them, which I was also very anxious to do. I wanted to give an important _coup d’œil_ at the hospitals there, which were still very full. So I made the most of my remaining time; visited the French, Turkish, and Sardinian camps, and their hospitals, from each of which, I am proud to say, I gleaned some important and useful dietetic information. It was, however, better suited to the camp than to the permanent hospitals. What struck me most in the French and Sardinian treatments, which are based upon a similar system, was this--viz., that too much liquid of a weak nature was administered to the patients, and in too great quantities--especially as the climate had so great a tendency to produce diarrhœa, dysentery, and cholera. I had remarked during my stay at Scutari, and when the hospital was filled with patients suffering from those diseases, that the succulent mutton and barley broth I had introduced was selected daily from the dietary by the English doctors, in preference to beef-tea, chicken-broth, &c.; as well as the receipts for plain boiled rice, savoury rice, slightly curried rice, rice-pulp, ground rice-pudding, sago-jelly, sago-panada; and for beverages, strong rice-water, barley-water, and arrowroot-water, in preference to lemonade during the first stage of those diseases; and that numbers of these light though nutritious dishes were selected by the doctors when the disease was at its height. Though I am aware that in different countries men have different constitutions, I also remarked that the Turkish system of diet closely resembled the English, as they used a great deal of rice, flour--stewed, broiled, and boiled meats, &c. &c. In giving this opinion, _en passant_, it is only with the intention of submitting to the public, if not to the faculty, things which struck me forcibly during my visits to those important establishments, in which everybody has and ever will take a national