All this is satisfactory in showing that the preparation of food for the table is a subject which can no longer be pooh-poohed, and there are other signs and tokens which unmistakably point to the same conclusion.  As a proof of this it is only necessary to point to the fact that eminent physicians have written prefaces to works on cookery, and more than this, have contributed to the literature of the same.  There is a very excellent handbook by Phillis Browne, to which the late Sir J. Risdon Bennett, a former President of the Royal College of Physicians, London, contributed the prefatory note.  In it he remarks, the value of wholesome and properly-cooked food has never been sufficiently understood or appreciated in the United Kingdom.  “In scarcely any other country,” says he, “does so much prejudice and ignorance prevail on the subject of food and its employment.”  And in proceeding to speak of the growing tendency to make instruction in cookery a part of ordinary education, he adds that this must be a subject for sincere rejoicing with those who desire both the moral and physical welfare of the poorer classes.  This is not the only evidence of interest which the same physician took in this matter, for he has also written an admirable and lengthy article on Food and its Uses in Health.

But there is another writer to whom the English speaking people are deeply indebted for a knowledge of all that pertains to food and cookery; I refer to Sir Henry Thompson, the eminent London surgeon.  His work on food and Feeding has already run through six editions, and one can only hope that he will long be enabled to benefit his race by a succession of issues.  He has written other volumes on the same subject, and further, by his contributions to the nineteenth century and The Lancet, he has materially raised the status of the culinary art.  And there are also quite a number of works on diet, and on food, written by well-known authorities in the medical world, so that the science of dietetics must eventually attain an unassailable position.

The preceding naturally leads up to the main point, namely, the controlling influence which cookery exercises over health.  Now if I were asked to name the one single cause which produces more indigestion than anything else, I should unhesitatingly answer, bad Cookery.  Many people Fun away with the idea that good Cookery is necessarily elaborate Cookery, and that in consequence it is quite beyond the ordinary purse.  Such is not, by any means, the case, and as a matter of fact good Cookery aims at getting the best possible results at the least possible cost.  Herein lies the excellence of French Cookery, and as I have occasion to remark elsewhere, the bulk of the population in that country live infinitely better than does the average Briton.

Indigestion, then, is the great primary result of bad cookery.  But, on the other hand, let us hear what Dr. Lauder Brunton has to say on the score of food when properly prepared.  “Savoury food,” says he, “causes the digestive juices to be freely secreted; well cooked and palatable food is therefore more digestible than unpalatable, and if the food lacks savour, a desire naturally arises to supply it by condiments, not always well selected or wholesome.”