upon this diet chiefly, and by abstaining from salted
meats, his scorbutic sick had quite recovered on board; and not in that
voyage only, bur, by the same means, in his subsequent cruizes during the
war, without his being obliged to send one of them on shore because they
could not get well at sea. Yet oat-meal unfermented, like barley
unmalted, hath no sensible effect in curing the scurvy: as if the fixed
air, which is incorporated with these grains, could mix with the chyle
which they produce, enter the lacteals, and make part of the nourishment
of the body, without manifesting any elastic or antiseptic quality, when
not loosened by a previous fermentation.

[* The Essex, a seventy-gun ship.]

[** This rural food, in the North, is called Sooins.]

Before the power of the _fixed air_ in subduing putrefaction was known,
the efficacy of fruits, greens, and fermented liquors, was commonly
ascribed to the acid in their composition and we have still reason to
believe that the acid concurs in operating that effect. If it be alleged
that mineral acids, which contain little or no _fixed air_, have been
tried in the scurvy with little success, I would answer, that I doubt that
in those trials they have never been sufficiently diluted; for it is easy
to conceive, that in the small quantity of water the elixir of vitriol,
for instance, is commonly given, that austere acid can scarce get beyond
the first passages; considering the delicate sensibility of the mouths of
the lacteals, which must force them to shut and exclude so pungent a
liquor. It were therefore a proper experiment to be made, in a deficiency
of malt, or when that grain shall happen to be spoilt by keeping*, to use
water acidulated with the spirit of sea-salt, in the proportion of only
ten drops to a quart; or with the weak spirit of vitriol, thirteen drops
to the same measure**; and to give to those that are threatened with the
disease three quarts of this liquor daily, to be consumed as they shall
think proper.

[* Captain Cook told me, that the malt held out sufficiently good for the
two first years; but that in the third, having lost much of its taste, he
doubted whether it retained any of its virtues. Mr. Patten however
observed, that though the malt at that time was sensibly decayed, yet
nevertheless he had still found it useful when he employed a large
proportion of it to make the infusion.]

[** In these proportions I found the water taste just acidulou