ocurable for meat, porridge, etc. These are quite
suitable for vegetables--cabbage, turnips, carrots, peas, etc. The
vegetable should be placed, without water, in the inner pot; it will
take somewhat longer to cook than when boiled in the usual way. The
outer vessel should be partly filled with water kept boiling. Any juice
which comes out of the vegetable should be served in the dish along
with it. It may be thickened with a little flour and butter, or if a
regular white sauce is being made, the juice should be used instead of
part of the water. If no double boiler is procurable, an ordinary tin
can, inside a saucepan will serve very well. Many who consider certain
vegetables indigestible, as usually prepared, will find that when
cooked in this way they agree with them perfectly. The fact that the
colour of cabbage, peas, etc., is not so green as when boiled in a
great deal of water, is not of importance, when the flavour and
wholesomeness are so much increased. In stews and vegetable soups the
salts are, of course, preserved.

Cooling in Heating.--Often it is difficult to get a sufficient cooling
effect by means of cold cloths without unduly chilling the patient.
When the head has to be cooled, as in the very dangerous disease
meningitis, the effect must pass through the mass of the skull before
reaching the brain. A large and long continued application is needed
for this. The surface is apt then to be overcooled before the interior
of the head is affected. In such a case the surface of the head, when
the patient feels it too cold, should be gently rubbed, as directed in
Eyes, Squinting, until this feeling goes off. Then the cooling may be
resumed. Or if rubbing be disagreeable, a warm cloth may be applied for
a short time, and cooling then resumed. In this way a succession of
_waves_ of heating and cooling can for a long time be sent through the
surface, with good effect and no chill. The short heating restores the
surface, and does not interfere with the cooling effect reaching the
interior parts. The same principle applies to cooling any part of the
body (_see_ Bathing). Any _deep-seated_ inflammation is best reached in
this way.

For instance, in the large hip-joints it is of vast importance to reach
inflammatory action in parts that are not near the surface, and cold
cloths, pressed constantly, produce distress in the surface, if there
is no intermission in supplying them. The patient is apt to rush to the
co