It may be observed, that Captain Cook says not more in praise of vinegar than of the robs; yet I would not thence infer that he made no account of that acid, but only that as he happened in this voyage to be sparingly provided with it and yet did well, he could not consider a large store of 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 otherwise, to a species of putrefaction; that very cause, of which the ill-grounded class of alcalescents was supposed to be a promoter*.

[* See this remark more at large, in my Observations on the Diseases of the Army, App.  Pap. 7.]