FROSTBEULENTINCTUR, FROSTBEULENWASSER—Chilblain Tincture, Chilblain Water. Manufactured by a chiropodist of Munich. It is a solution of 2 grammes zinc sulphate in 60 grammes water. (Wittstein.)
FROSTSALBE—Frost Ointment (Wahler, Kupferzell). Mutton tallow, 24; hog’s lard, 24; iron oxide, 4; heat it in an iron vessel, stirring continually with an iron rod until the whole has become black; then add 4 parts Venice turpentine, 2 parts bergamot oil, and 2 parts Armenian bole rubbed smooth with olive oil.
FRUIT. Syn. Fructus, L. Among botanists this is the mature ovary or pistil, containing the ripened ovules or seeds. In familiar language, the term is applied to any product of a plant containing the seed, more especially those that are eatable.
Fruits are extensively employed as articles of diet by man, both as luxuries and nutriment. The fruit of the cereals furnishes our daily bread; that of the vine gives us the well-known beverage, wine, whilst other varieties enrich our desserts, and provide us with some of our most valuable condiments and aromatics. The acidulous and subacid fruits are antiseptic, aperient, attenuant, diuretic, and refrigerant. They afford little nourishment, and are apt to promote diarrhœa and flatulency. They are, however, occasionally exhibited medicinally, in putrid affections, and are often useful in bilious and dyspeptic complaints. The farinaceous fruits (grain), as already stated, furnish the principal and most useful portion of the food of man. The oleo-farinaceous (nuts, &c.) are less wholesome and less easy of digestion than those purely farinaceous. The saccharine fruits, or those abounding in sugar, are nutritious and laxative, but are apt to ferment and disagree with delicate stomachs when eaten in excess. Stone fruits are more difficult of digestion than the other varieties, and are very apt to disorder the stomach and bowels.
As a rule, fruit should never be eaten in large quantities at a time, and only when quite ripe. It then appears to be exceedingly wholesome, and to be a suitable corrective to the grossness of animal food. It also exercises a powerful action on the skin, and is a specific for scurvy in its early stages. Many cutaneous diseases may likewise be removed by the daily use of a moderate quantity of fruit, or other fresh vegetable food. Cases are not uncommon which, after resisting every variety of ordinary medical treatment, yield to a mixed fruit or vegetable diet.
Fruits should be gathered in dry weather, and preferably about noon, because the dew and moisture deposited on them during the night and earlier part of the morning has then evaporated. They should be quite ripe when gathered, but the sooner they are removed from the tree after this point is arrived at, the better. Immature fruit never keeps so well as that which has ripened on the tree; and overripe fruit is liable to be bruised and to lose flavour. The less fruit is handled in gathering the better. Some of them, as PEACHES, NECTARINES, GRAPES, PLUMS, &c., require to be treated with great delicacy, to avoid bruising them or rubbing off the bloom. Some fruit, as a few varieties of APPLES, PEARS, and ORANGES, &c., are gathered before they are fully ripe, in order that they may the better undergo the perils of transit and storage.
Pres. Ripe fruits are commonly preserved in the fresh state by placing them in a cool dry situation, on shelves, so that they do not touch each other; or by packing them in clean, dry sand, sawdust, straw, bran, or any similar substance, with like care, to preserve them from the action of air and moisture. An excellent plan, commonly adopted for dessert fruit in this country, is to wrap each separately in a piece of clean, dry paper, and to fill small, wide-mouthed jars or honey-pots with them. The filled pots are then packed one upon another (see engr.) in a dry and cold place (as a cellar), where the frost cannot reach them. The space (a) between the two pots may be advantageously filled up with plaster of Paris made into a paste with water. The joint is thus rendered air-tight, and the fruit will keep
good for a long time. The mouth of the top jar is covered with a slate. For use, the jars should be taken one at a time from the store-room as wanted, and the fruit exposed for a week or ten days in a warm dry room before being eaten, by which the flavour is much improved.
Fruit is preserved on the large scale for the London market by placing in a cool situation first a layer of straw or paper, and so on alternately, to the height of 20 or 25 inches, which cannot be well exceeded, as the weight of the superincumbent fruit is apt to crush or injure the lower layers. Sometimes alternate layers of fruit and paper are arranged in baskets or hampers, which are then placed in the cellar or fruit-room. The baskets admit of being piled one over the other without injury to the fruit. The use of brown paper is inadmissible for the above purposes, as it conveys its peculiar flavour to the fruit. Thick white-brown paper is the cheapest and the best.