Thus far Dr. Mounsey, from whose account it would seem, that the rye-meal assisted both in quickening the fermentation and adding more fixed air, since the malt alone could not so readily produce so tart and brisk a liquor.  And there is little doubt but that whenever the other grains can be brought to a proper degree of fermentation, they will more or less in the same way become useful.  That oats will, I am satisfied from what I have been told by one of the intelligent friends of Captain Cook.  This gentleman being on a cruize in a large ship*, in the beginning of the late war, and the scurvy breaking out among his crew, he bethought him self of a kind of food he had seen used in some parts of the country, as the most proper on the occasion.  Some oatmeal is put into a wooden vessel, hot water is poured upon it, and the infusion continues until the liquor begins to taste sourish, that is, till a fermentation comes on, which in a place moderately warm, may be in the space of two days.  The water is then poured off from the grounds, and boiled down to the consistence of a jelly**.  This he ordered to be made and dealt out in messes, being first sweetened with sugar, and seasoned with some prize French wine, which though turned sour, yet improved the taste, and made this aliment not less palatable than medicinal.

He assured me, that 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.