WHY THE GERMANS EAT SAUER-KRAUT.
The reason why the most learned people on earth eat sauer-kraut may be found in the following extract from a work entitled Petri Andreæ Matthioli Senensis medici commentarii in sex libros Pedacii Dioscoridis de Materiâ Medica. Venetiis. ex officina Valgrisiana MDLXV. Traduit de Latin en Francais, par M. Antoine du Pinot. Lyon, MDCLV. Preface, p. 13. ligne 30: “Finally, in order to omit nothing which can add to the knowledge of simples, it must be noted that Nature, mother and producer of all things, has created various simples, which have a sympathy or natural antipathy to each other; which is a very considerable point in this matter, and has no like as a mystery and secret. And thus it has seemed to me good to hint a word about it, and principally of those which are used in medicine. To commence, then, with the oak and the olive; these two trees hate each other in such sort that, if you plant one in the hole from which the other was dug, it will die there; and, even if you plant one near the other, they will work each other’s death. The cabbage and the vine do the like; for it has been seen that, if you plant a cabbage at the foot of a vine, the vine will recoil and draw itself away. And thus it is no marvel that the cabbage is very useful to sober topers, and that the Germans eat it commonly in a compost to safeguard themselves from their wine.”