Of Butter And Butter-Milk

There are as many different butters, as there are milks of different animals; but that most in use is butter made with cows milk, which is best in the month of May. Butter is nourishing and pectoral, keeps the body open, blunts the points of acrid poisons, and is properly mixt in clysters for the bloody flux. The excessive use of butter relaxes and weakens the stomach, destroys the appetite, causes the reaching to vomit, and heats the body, especially when it is old; when it is fresh, it is very wholesome, and agrees with all ages and constitutions.

Butter-milk is of excellent use as a medicine, because it not only nourishes, but is cooling and moistening. It suppresses all preternatural heats proceeding from disorders of the bowels; cures obstinate hoarsnesses, catarrhs, hectic fevers, and such bleeding in the stomach and guts as renders the stools black with a horrible stench. It likewise cures pissing of blood in the small pox, and has been reckoned a great secret in ulcers of the kidneys.

Of Cheese And Whey

Cheese is nothing else but the curds of milk se-parated from the serum of whey, pressed and dried with a gentle heat. It may be made with all sorts of milk, but that of cows is most common. It ought to be made with new milk, and should be used when it is neither too old nor too new. Cheese yields plenty of nourishment, but is hard of digestion, and agrees best with labouring people: eaten at night it lies heavy on the stomach, and disturbs rest. However a little of it after meals promotes the digestion of others aliments. It is by no means proper food for those who are troubled with the gravel or stone. When cheese is new, it is soft, clammy and abounds with humidity; whence it is hard of digestion, lies heavy on the stomach, and generates wind. When it is very old, it becomes dry, sharp, bites the tongue, and is quite of another nature from what it was at first, whence many bad effects ensue. All cheese is not equally esteemed; Parmesan, Chiltoun, and Chedder, are the best; good Glocestershire and Cheshire are the next; Suffolk cheese is word of all. Some have such a natural antipathy to cheese, that they cannot sit at the table where it is placed.

Whey is proper to keep the body open, to cleanse the stomach and guts, to cool preternatural heats, and to purify the blood. Hence it is beneficial in bilious, burning, and malignant fevers, either alone or with a little of the juice of oranges or lemons. In all cafes where there is more need of tempera-ting the humours than nourishment, whey is of the greatest service. Whey drank for a month or two is good in all chronic distempers.