Crumb

“ They cannot be blamed for neglecting American crust, for the crust of the ordinary American bread actually is inferior to the crumb, being tough, leathery, and flavorless. But the American crumb is nearly always indigestible. ”

“ Soon it began to pick up the crumbs, and by-and-bye we had a score of strangers at our meal.
Later we lay on our backs and smoked. 'Twas good to watch the blue of the sky outside the line of leaves that shaded us from the sun. The feeling of rest and ease was sublime. The birds consumed every crumb which had been thrown to them ”

“ Crumbs from your feast you scarce can countermand,
And crumbs are all I ask, and just the meed
Of friendly interest. I abase my pride.
The strong can suffer silently and bleed
As long as strength lasts, keep the blood inside,
Until one weakens when it spurts and drips. ”

“ Some six weeks ago I was allowed by the doctor to have white bread to eat instead of the coarse black or brown bread of ordinary prison fare. It is a great delicacy. It will sound strange that dry bread could possibly be a delicacy to any one. To me it is so much so that at the close of each meal I carefully eat whatever crumbs may be left on my tin plate, or have fallen on the rough towel that one uses as a cloth so as not to soil one’s table; and I do so not from hunger—I get now quite sufficient food—but simply in order that nothing should be wasted of what is given to me. ”

“ Now the walls are crumbling to dust; one or two window-shutters flap disconsolately in the wind, parasitic plants grow over the mouldering arches where a dead past sleeps its sleeps and dreams its dreams. ”

“ If sport, or exercise in the garden, led me to desire refreshment between the regular meals, a piece of brown bread was given me without butter, and I was content. Candies and confectionery were strangers to us primitive people. The stomach, that keystone of this mysterious frame, not being unduly stimulated, no morbid tastes were formed, and no undue admixture of saccharine or oleaginous matter caused effervescence and disease. ”

“ I for one am glad Lent and its eggs, red-pepper, and bad-smelling fish is gone. What cowards our stomachs make of us all. I really have begun to long for home, or rather home-cooking. I have made out a list which I view every day, and see how much longer my stomach will have to endure this trash. Fifty-six more mornings to drink black coffee and long for even ham and eggs, with heavenly thoughts of hot cakes and butter. ”

“ Think of a thin, solid crust, spread like icing upon a cake and concealing the soft, spongy matter beneath, covering every portion of the cruel plain; a crust which yields a crop of luxurious, enticing grass of the most perfect emerald hue; a crust firm in itself and dry looking, and yet not strong enough to bear the weight of a good-sized terrier. ”

“ As you know, once the stomach is full of water and well walled up, our body heat warms the fluid. As there is no leakage of heat except when we iris meat and vegetables in or out, the water comes to the boiling point.
Well, to pulse on with the story, when the mobile had scaled away the bone and copper and iron with his acids and made a hole large enough for his body, he dropped in for dinner.
I suppose he anticipated the usual helpless Mother or virgin, nerves numbed and waiting to be eaten. ”

“ If it was only a bit of dry bread, a crust, a bone left by a dog, a little mouldy pudding of Indian corn, a fish bone, a cherry stone—in fact anything that he could gnaw. But he could find nothing, nothing at all, absolutely nothing. ”

“ Percy H. Book, p. 353.
“Non comedas crustam, colorem quia gignit adustam ... the Authour in this Text warneth vs, to beware of crusts eating, because they ingender a-dust cholor, or melancholly humours, by reason that they bee burned and dry. And therefore great estates the which be [orig. the] chollerick of nature, cause the crustes aboue and beneath to be chipped away; wherfore the pith or crumme should be chosen, the which is of a greater nourishment then the crust.” Regimen Sanitatis Salerni, ed. 1634, p. 71. Fr. chapplis, bread-chippings. Cotgrave. ”

“ Pound Crey-Fishes or Crabs alive in a Mortar to get their Blood, and foment the Part with it hot; it is a good Remedy: Otherwise intermix the pounded Crabs with May-Butter without Salt, and let 'em be boil'd up together, and scumm'd, till a red Ointment be made, which may be drawn off, or strain'd for Use. ”

“ The stomach begins to assert itself as an independent creature with a will of its own. We should boil lupine leaves, clover, starchy petioles, and saxifrage rootstocks like the Indians. We try to ignore our gastric troubles, rise and gaze about us, turn our eyes to the mountains, and climb doggedly up through brush and rocks into the heart of the scenery. A stifled calm comes on, and the day’s duties and even enjoyments are languidly got through with. ”

“ Bread and Flour.
Good bread is light, porous, and spongy; of a sweet nutty smell; and when pressed with the finger is tough69 and resists the pressure like sponge, recovering with a spring its original texture as soon as the finger is removed: if any fracture appears, it is a sign of adulteration. The more numerous and large the cells or little holes are in it, the more perfectly is the bread made, and the better adapted for digestion. ”

“ For in people who are extremely asthenic it is just these fluids which remain undigested, which accumulate and produce gurglings, and which oppress and overload the stomach, whereas in strong persons not merely do none of these things happen, but even a large quantity of bread or meat passes rapidly down. ”

“ You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread, or cake; you must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand heap. ”

“ It is true, however, that the very pernicious habits of some people, who use the coarse wheaten bread, entirely counteract the aperient effects of the bread; and it is true that others, depending wholly on the virtues of this bread for peristaltic action, and neglecting all exercise, by their extreme inertness, and indolence, and overeating, bring on a sluggishness, and debility, and constipation of the bowels, and perhaps become severely afflicted with piles, in spite of the natural fitness of the bread to promote regular peristaltic action, and to prevent all these results. ”

“ A second smears his legs with butter. Another eats a crust of dry bread, which exacerbates the torments, and afterwards brings relief. A fourth throws water over his face and hands or his legs and feet ”

“ Heat, he ascertained, is life, and cold is death—the stomach is the furnace, and food the fuel in health, assisted by medicine in disease. The stomach, like a fireplace or stovepipe, he supposed was liable to get foul, and clogged, and need cleaning out, and that all disease is caused by some filthy accumulation, and that all the art of cure consists in removing such accumulations and thoroughly cleansing the machine. ”

“ All young grubs are at first fed with a specially nutritious food, discharged from the worker’s stomach, to which is added a digestive secretion derived from special salivary glands in the worker’s head. ”

“ For example, in the case of a mouthful of bread and meat swallowed at once, the bread passes away on its travels long before the meat has done dancing attendance in the stomach, awaiting that transformation without which the pylorus will never allow it to slip through. ”

“ A crust of bread is found in all sorts of places: in the street, at the corners of lanes and alleys, on heaps of rubbish. Do not imagine that this man, on the hunt for hard, dirty, disgusting pieces of bread, has fallen so low as to be obliged to live on the fruits of his discoveries. ”

“ That Flesh takes more than thirty months to grow to maturity, and besides is often scarce? That each of these miraculous grains of corn, which they bury in the earth, gives back to them more than a hundredfold? That Flesh has four legs upon which to run away, and we have only two to overtake them? That the Corn remains and grows where the white men sow it; that the winter, which for us is a time of toilsome hunting, is for them the time of rest? ”

“ Before nibbling at the seed-lobes, the grub does in fact embark upon this tunnel. It feeds on the meal found along the road; it gathers the discoloured atoms hanging from the walls; and lastly, when strong enough, it attacks the loaf of the kernel, digs into it and disappears inside. The stomach is ready. ”

“ For the most part there was a frozen crust that bore our weight, but this crust has an unfortunate habit of giving way at unexpected moments, particularly when one has just taken a big stride forward. There is an effect very much like coming upon the head of the stairs in the darkness when you think you are still safely walking along the hall. ”

“ The bodies of both grow and are fattened alike by meat and drink. And from the want of meat and drink both waste and perish alike. In both the stomach receives the food and transmits it when digested to the belly, which generates the blood, by which all the members are refreshed and restored. ”

“ You must by this time have some idea how the food, which has been masticated and softened in the mouth, cooked, kneaded, and decomposed in the stomach, and transformed into a soft, semi-transparent kind of paste, will soon be ready to mix with the blood, in order to repair the waste that the life-stream is continually undergoing in its ceaseless course through all parts of the body. ”

“ Twelve Hours after the Patient has been let Blood, a Vomit may be usefully prescribed, to evacuate the noxious Humours of the Stomach, that may hinder the Operation of Remedies, or by being absorbed by the Blood, may joyn with the Matter of the Disease, and encrease the Putrefaction, as well as to agitate and shake the Frame of the Nerves, and express from the Glands their putrid Contents. ”

“ Melancholy, cold and dry, thick, black, and sour, begotten of the more feculent part of nourishment, and purged from the spleen, is a bridle to the other two hot humours, blood and choler, preserving them in the blood, and nourishing the bones. ”

“ If the cramp attack the stomach or bowels, it is attended with considerable danger: medicine may relieve but cannot cure. All hot and stimulating liquors must be carefully avoided, and a tea-cupful of lukewarm gruel or camomile tea should be frequently given, with ten or fifteen drops of deliquidated salt of tartar in each. ”

“ Purgatives ought to be taken only in cases where the crudities are disposed for evacuation, and their turgescence obviously tends downward: this circumstance may be ascertained, in acute diseases, by the weight and distention of the abdomen; flatulency; rumbling and pain in the lower belly; and an inclination to stools. 2. They must be cautiously avoided, where Nature appears to make an effort to vomit. ”

“ Scurvies, the body corrupted with Sea-diet, Beef and Pork tainted, Butter and Cheese corrupted, fish rotten, a long voyage, coming into the searching sharpness of a purer climate, causeth death and sickness amongst them.
Men and Women keep their complexions, but lose their Teeth: the Women are pittifully Tooth-shaken ”

“ That by the extraordinary heat, the ferment of the blood being raised too high, and the tone of the stomach relaxed, when the weather breaks the blood palls, and like overfermented liquors is depauperated, or turns eager and sharp, and there's a crude digestion, whence the name distempers may be supposed to ensue. ”

“ From this source the blood is drawn through the exceedingly narrow gullet—too narrow for anything solid to pass—into the intestine-like stomach, whence it is, probably, gradually drawn off during the slow progress of digestion, while the animal, sated with food, is hanging in a state of torpidity from the roof of its cave or from the inner sides of a hollow tree. ”

“ It seems his sleep was hindered by your railing; no wonder that his head is light: and his meat, was sauced with your upbraidings; unquiet meals make ill digestions, and that has thrown him into this fever. ”

“ In spite of what the peasants say about the satisfying properties of these seeds, the doctors consider the flour made from them most injurious to the health. All sorts of stomach complaints can be traced to the consumption of bread of which it is an ingredient. ”

“ Often, when I have picked the last grain from the bones of my scanty morsel, have I eat the very bones, as much of them as possibly could be eaten, and then have had to perform some hard and fatiguing duty, when my stomach has been as craving as it was before I had eaten any thing at all. ”

“ Therefore the stronger Crudity is predominant in Purging things, the more impetuously do they move the Stomach; and the more strongly the Stomach casts out and expells that, so much the more vehemently also are the noxious Humours of the Body cast up. If a Cathartick be too crude, rough179 and immature, the Stomach rejects it much more strongly, because the whole of Nature is thereby disturbed, and with all its might endeavours wholly to expell such a rude guest. ”

“ Mint water strengthens the stomach, helps concoction and stays vomiting, distil it in the latter end of May, or beginning of June, as the year is in forwardness or backwardness, observe that in all the rest.
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Chervil water distilled about the end of May, helps ruptures, breaks the stone, dissolves congealed blood, strengthens the heart and stomach.
The water of Mother of Time strengthens the brain and stomach, gets a man a good stomach to his victuals, provoke urine and the menses, heats the womb. ”

“ As incrustations form on the surfaces of any woody, mineral, or vegetable substance immersed in these waters, a fear is sometimes engendered in timid minds that similar incrustations might form in the stomach, bowels, or kidneys of those who drink them! ”

“ Happily they are not so painful as ordinary boils. The malady appears at first as a white point, not larger than a pin's head, and remains thus for about three months. Then the flesh swells, becomes red and hard and suppurates, and underneath a rough crust which is formed is corroded and eaten away as by vitriol. On some strangers the fatal point appears within a few days of their arrival. ”