Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 edition. Excerpt: ... (c) Oysters And Shellfish; Their Advantages And Disadvantages. When we read, as has been related by Brillat Savarin, that while he was acting as Envoy of the Directory during the great revolution he dined with a Monsieur Laporte, who ate oysters during a whole hour, and consumed 32 dozen of them (which did him so little harm that he managed very well with the rest of the dinner), we must conclude that oysters must have been much cheaper one hundred years ago, and that at that time typhoid epidemic due to the eating of oysters did not occur. The latter was reserved as a blessing of our times, with our fully developed canalization! We can, to be sure, understand the appetite of Monsieur Laporte and his contemporaries, who could not content themselves with less than a gross (12 dozen) of oysters, for in order to obtain sufficient nourishment from these bivalves a great many of them must be eaten. An oyster contains about 5 to 6 per cent, of albumin, 1 per cent, of fat, 3 DEGREES per cent, carbohydrates, so that in 1 kilo of oysters 520 calories are contained. It would therefore be necessary to eat a very great number of oysters, and if these were the best of their kind, the Zealand oysters, or those from Ostende or Whitestable, one would have to be a multimillionaire, like those owning palaces on Fifth Avenue in New York, to stand the cost. Vitellus was quite right when, about two thousand years ago, he called this food "cibis nobilium." It is quite easy to eat a great many oysters, because they are very easily digested and because they also stimulate the appetite, so that they are to be recommended for persons suffering from lack of appetite. They can be well digested by all convalescents and weakened persons. It is because they tend to stimulate...
