I do not desire to flatter you, nor unnecessarily to disparage the former miserable system of cooking. Your presence in that essential department of the healing art inspired us with new hopes. In a few days we discovered the superiority of your successful efforts to unite the agreeable and nutritive qualities of food. Under your instructions, the meat became savoury and eatable—the soups were relished—the puddings were pleasant, and enjoyed—the tea and coffee were refreshing. Those invalids who before your arrival seemed to yield most patiently to their hard lot of semi-starvation, and often went without the medical comforts, now looked out anxiously for the hour when these creature blessings were usually distributed. The Government, with a proper generosity, gave almost a carte blanche to the Medical Staff to order every medical comfort to the poor sick soldier who could no longer wield a sword or shoulder a musket, and who were perishing by diseases aggravated by improper diet and bad cooking. The art of the cuisine yields not in importance to medicine itself—it is the handmaid of the physician; and I would rather trust to its curative powers than to the physic of the doctors, if I were limited to the alternative of either the one or the other.
I am, dear Sir, your obedient servant,
Robert Woollaston, M.D. Lond., F.S.C.S.,
Late one of the Physicians of the Barrack
Hospital at Scutari.
To Monsieur Soyer.
Copy of Letter addressed by the Author to the Right Honourable the Lord Panmure, K.T., &c. &c. &c., relating to the completion of his Mission, in the shape of a Journal.
My Lord,—I beg to close this little journal by stating the reason of my long absence since the treaty of peace. It was with the intention of writing a work which will, I hope, perpetuate the ameliorations I have been enabled (through the confidence reposed in me by your lordship) to introduce in the diets for the hospitals, as well as the cooking for the army. And this can be effected in a very short time, without increasing the expense to the nation, but will, on the contrary, be likely to tend to economy, it being well recognised by the faculty that change of food is as essential to the soldier in health as change of diet is to the invalid. This work will also, with little trouble, have the effect of making cooks of the soldiers, and teach them at the same time to make the most of their rations either in camp or in barracks.
With the most profound respect, I have the honour to remain,
Your Lordship’s obedient servant,
A. Soyer.