f
vinegar to be so material an article of provision as was commonly
imagined. And though he supplied its place in the messes of the men with
the acid of the sour-crout, and trusted chiefly to fire for purifying his
decks, yet it is to be hoped that future navigators will not therefore
omit it. Vinegar will serve at least for a wholesome variety in the
seasoning of salted meats, and may be sometimes successfully used as a
medicine, especially in the aspersions of the berths of the sick. It is
observable, that though the smell be little grateful to a person in
health, yet it is commonly agreeable to those who are sick, at least to
such as are confined to a foul and crowded ward. There the physician
himself will smell to vinegar, as much for pleasure as for guarding
against infection.

Now the wort and the acid juices were only dispensed as medicines, but
the next article was of more extensive use. This was the Sour-Crout (sour
cabbage), a food of universal request in Germany. The acidity is acquired
by its spontaneous fermentation, and it was the sour taste which made it
the more acceptable to all who ate it. To its further commendation we may
add, that it held out good to the 1ast of the voyage.

It may seem strange, that though this herb hath had so high encomiums
bestowed upon it by the ancients (witness what Cato the elder and Pliny
the Naturalist say on the subject), and hath had the sanction of the
experience of nations for ages, it should yet be disapproved of by some
of the most distinguished medical writers of our times. One finds it
yield a rank smell in decoction, which he confounds with that of
putrefaction. Another analyzes it, and discovers so much gross air in the
composition as to render it indigestible; yet this flatulence, so much
decryed, must now be acknowledged to be the _fixed air_, which makes the
cabbage so wholesome when fermented. Nay it hath been traduced by one of
the most celebrated physicians of our age, as partaking of a poisonous
nature: nor much better founded was that notion of the same illustrious
professor, that cabbage being an alcalescent plant, and therefore
disposing to putrefaction, could never be used in the scurvy, except when
the disease proceeded from an acid. But the experiments which I formerly
laid before the Society evinced this vegetable, with the rest of the
supposed alcalescents, to be really acescent; and proved that the scurvy
is never owing to acidity, but, much othe