Ye sons of Fiction clad in stupid prose,
O’erweening teachers, who, yourselves in doubt,
Light up false fires and send us far about,
Long may the spider round your pages spin,
Subtle and slow, her emblematic gin.
Buried in dust and lost in silence dwell,
Most potent, dull, and reverend friends, farewell!”
No article of diet was ever half so roughly handled as the fungus. What diatribes against it might be cited from the works of Athenæus, Dioscorides, Galen, Pliny, the Arabian physicians, and all their commentators! What terrible recitals, too, of poisoning from some few species have been industriously circulated, and the unfavourable inference drawn from these, been applied to the whole tribe—a mistake which some writers, even in modern times, have perpetuated. Thus, Kirker votes the whole “a family of malignants;”[68] thus too Allen and Batarra pen unsolicited apages,[69] and warn us, in an especial manner, to beware of them; while Scopoli includes in his very definition of a fungus, that it is of a class of plants which are always to be suspected, and which are for the most part poisonous. Tertullian, with more of epigram than of truth, makes out, that for every different hue they display there is a pain to correspond to it, and just so many modes of death as there are distinct species;[70] to all which, and a great deal more similar rhapsody and invective, tens of thousands of our Continental neighbours in the daily habit of eating nothing else but funguses might reply, in the words of Plautus—
“Adeone me fuisse fungum ut qui illis crederem?”
Those who abuse funguses generally do so from prejudice rather than from personal experience, objecting to their flesh as being heavy of digestion, and to their juices as being more or less prejudicial to health. Some say they are too rich, others of too heating a character. These objections are for the most part without foundation, as those who eat them can abundantly testify. To quote the authority of one or two medical friends on the Continent, formed on large personal experience, in favour of the excellence of this diet, Professors Puccinelli of Lucca, Briganti of Naples, Sanguinetti of Rome, Ottaviani of Urbino, Viviani of Genoa, are all consumers of funguses. Vittadini, whose excellent work on the esculent kinds of Italy is without a rival, himself eats, and gives us ample receipts for dressing them. In France, a similar service has been rendered to the public by Paulet, Persoon, Cordier, and Roques,[71] who have severally published excellent treatises on the various kinds fit for food, as they occur in the different provinces; whilst the influence of the last winter has been the means of introducing several new species into the Parisian markets, thus causing them to be very generally known. Not to multiply individual testimony needlessly, let that of Schwægrichen suffice, who tells us, that on seeing the peasants about Nuremberg eating raw mushrooms,[72] he too, for several weeks, restricted himself entirely to this diet, “eating with them nothing but bread, and drinking nothing but water, when, instead of finding his health impaired, he rather experienced an increase of strength.” Vegetior evasit! as the inscription at Rome relates to have been the case with St. John when he emerged, after one hour’s cooking, from a caldron of boiling oil. In a word, that which has been the daily bread of nations—the poor man’s manna—for many centuries, cannot be an unwholesome, much less a dangerous food.[73] Funguses, no doubt, are a rich and dainty fare; and so whatever objections apply to made-dishes in genere may apply also to these, which, while they contain all the sapid and nutritious constituents of animal food, have however an advantage over it—viz. that while they are as rich in gravy as any butcher’s meat, their texture is more tender, and their specific gravity less. Touching the general question as to the wholesomeness of made-dishes, it might perhaps be stated as a rule, to which there are many exceptions, that the more we vary and combine food, the better chance there is of our digesting it.[74] “You must assist nature,” Hippocrates says, “by art. You must vary your viands and your drinks. Music would tire if it were always to the same tune, so also does a monotonous regimen tire.[75] Cooks therefore make mixed dishes, and he who should always make the same dish would deservedly pass for not being a cook at all.”[76] And though Sydenham, in apparent discordance with this, recommends one dish for dinner, it is quite for another reason. Plain food may indeed suit some stomachs, but good cooking suits all stomachs; and when Seneca writes, that “there are as many diseases as cooks,” Roques takes him up properly by replying, “Yes; as bad cooks.” The rule for every dinner, plain or compound, is to dress it well—“that which is best administered is best;” and good cooking, thus understood as the art of improving and of making the most of a thing, is a matter of equal importance to both rich and poor. It is a safe rule, I believe, and one recommended on good authority too, if men wanted authority on such matter, to eat what they like, but not as much of it as they like.[77] Nine-tenths of dyspeptics become so from overfeeding. “Nauseosa satietas non ex crassis et pravis solum, sed etiam boni succi alimentis provenit.” Even Paracelsus, though an undoubted quack, might give some people a hint: “Dosis sola facit ut venenum sit vel non; cibus enim vel potus qualibet quantitate majore æquo assumtus venenum fit.” Dyspeptics are willing to enlist your sympathies in their behalf by telling of the delicacy of their mucous membrane, just as young countesses descant with more success on the extreme susceptibility of their nerves; nor is it always kindly received, if a well-wisher should remind them that their sufferings may not after all have been the fault either of their stomach or of the dish which they blame, but of their own indiscreet use of both. Whilst it is an acknowledged fact on all hands that infants are overfed, and that all children overfeed, men are by no means so prone or willing to admit that gluttony is perhaps the very last of childish things that they are in the habit of putting away from them. Thus, then, though funguses are not to be considered unwholesome, they are, like other good things, to be eaten with discretion and not à discrétion. “If you live an indolent life, are a sybarite in your heart, or should some violent passions (choler, jealousy, or revenge) be dealing with you, take care in such a case how you eat ragouts of truffles or of mushrooms; but if, on the contrary, your health be good, your life temperately prudent, your temper even, and your mind serene, then (provided you like them) you may eat of these luxuries without the slightest apprehension of their disagreeing with you.” M. Roques adds, and with truth, “it is the wine, surcharged with alcohol, of which men drink largely, in order, as they say, to relish and digest their mushrooms and made-dishes, that disagrees with the stomach, and that will, ere long, produce those visceral obstructions, and those nephritic ailments, at once so grievous to bear and so difficult to get rid of.”[78] If the reader shall retain one word of the following homely lines, and that word the last, so as to remember it in place, he will owe us no fee, and it will save him many a bitter draught:—