Some of my readers have seen the Greek word for "a fish" stamped upon Prayer Books, or possibly a fish embroidered on the hangings of the church where they go to celebrate the birth and the passion of Christ, as their ancestors have done for a thousand years. And now they will understand the origin of the association of the sacred fish with Christian ornament, derived from a lingering pagan reverence for the mysterious silvery inhabitants of deep pools, great rivers, and the sea. It is to such survivals of the now dim rituals and celebrations of ancient days that we owe the joyful holly and the mystic mistletoe, still happily preserved in our festivities at Christmas and New Year.
The use of fish as a regular article of diet is very widely spread. Fresh fish is considered by medical men to be more easily digested than the flesh of beasts or birds, and a healthy substitute for the latter. Almost everywhere where fish are eaten, the practice of drying, and often of salting, fish, so as to store them for consumption after an abundant "catch," has grown up, and with it a great liking for the flavours produced by the special chemical changes in the fish arising from salting and drying. Ordinary putrefaction produces very powerful poisons in the flesh of fish. They are known as "ptomaines," and are produced in the flesh of fish more readily that in that of other animals. But the process of drying in the sun or of salting and smoking the fish averts the formation of these poisons. It seems, however, that a diet of dried fish is responsible for a certain kind of poisoning in man, which renders him liable to the attack of the terrible bacillus of leprosy. The leprosy bacillus must get into the body by an abrasion or crack in the skin, through contact with a person already infected. It is known that the lack of fresh vegetable and animal food produces the ulcerated unhealthy condition called "scurvy," and a "scorbutic" state of the body seems to be favourable to the establishment in it of the leprosy bacillus. The substitution of fresh meat and vegetables as a diet in place of dried fish and salted meat has apparently been one of the chief causes of the disappearance not only of "scurvy" but of leprosy from Europe. Leprosy is rapidly becoming extinct in Norway. It still survives in a few localities, and is common in several uncivilized communities in remote regions, such as parts of Africa, India, China, and the Pacific Islands. In an earlier chapter, p. 292, I have referred to the disease known as "scurvy," which has become so uncommon now as to have escaped thorough investigation by modern pathologists.
A few marine fish are known which are highly poisonous to any and every man, even when cooked and eaten in a perfectly fresh condition, and there are many individuals who suffer from the "idiosyncrasy," as it is called, of liability to be dangerously poisoned not only by the peculiar and rare fish which are poisonous to every one, but by any and every fish they may eat, or by two or three common kinds only. Thus, some persons are poisoned if they eat lobster or crab, or oysters or mussels, but can tolerate ordinary fish. Others are poisoned, without fail, by mackerel and by grey mullet, but not by sole or salmon. The symptoms resemble those produced in ordinary persons by the "ptomaines" of putrid fish, and seem to be due to the presence even in fresh fish of a kind of ptomaine which some persons cannot destroy by digestion, whilst most persons can do so. It is literally true that "What is one man's meat is another man's poison."
The use as a "relish" of the little fish, the anchovy—allied to the sprat and the herring—preserved in salt liquor in a partially decomposed state, but not undergoing the ordinary chemical change excited by the bacteria of putrescence, is remarkable and very widely spread. Anchovy sauce is made by mashing up such chemically decomposed anchovies, and is one of the very greatest and most approved of all sauces. The anchovy is a Mediterranean fish; it is taken in small numbers in sprat-nets in the English Channel and in the Dutch Zuyder Zee. So-called "Norwegian anchovies" are not anchovies, but are small sprats. When taken fresh and cooked and eaten, the anchovy has a very bitter, unpleasant flavour, which can be washed out of it by splitting the fresh fish and letting it lie in salt and water. It was this practice of washing out the bitterness which led the Mediterranean fisher-folk to discover that if left for some time in moderately strong brine the anchovy develops a wonderfully appetizing flavour, and becomes dark red in colour, whilst the liquid also becomes red. I believe that, although it would be easy to do so, it has not been ascertained whether the red colour is due to a direct action of the salt upon the blood-pigment of the fish—as is the red colour of salt beef—or whether it is due to a special red-colour-making bacterium, as is the case with salted dried cod, which is sometimes rendered unsaleable by this red growth. However that may be, the red colour of the preserved anchovy is well known, and is produced by dealers by means of artificial pigments, if not already naturally present in the salted fish as they come to market. No one would guess on tasting a really fresh bitter anchovy that it could develop the fine flavour which it does when soaked in brine to get rid of its bitterness.
Another little fish, the Bummaloh, or "Bombay duck" (Harpodon), is taken in large quantities off the West Coast of India, and is dried and used for the peculiar flavour thus developed, which is quite different from that of the anchovy. It is a deep-water fish, and is phosphorescent. The liking for the flavours developed in these fishes by various bacteria when specially treated, is similar to that which necessity and custom has developed in our attitude to cheese. Fresh cheese is difficult to obtain. Habit has ended in our preferring stale, decomposed cheese, which has developed a whole series of flavours by the action on it of special bacteria and moulds. The Roman soldiers of the first century used a small salted fish (probably enough the anchovy) to eat with their rations of bread, and such fish were usually sold with bread. Probably the small "fishes" which, together with a dozen loaves of bread, are stated to have been used in the miraculous feeding of the multitude by Christ, were salted anchovies.
Dealers in Norwegian preserved fish not only falsely call small sprats by the name "Anchovy" in order to sell them, but they have recently prepared sprats in the manner invented by French fish-curers for the preparation of the young Pilchard. The French name for young Pilchard is "Sardines," and their Italian name even in Sir Thomas Browne's time (1646) was "Sardinos." The natural fine quality of the sardine and the skilful "tinning" and flavouring of it by the French "curers" of Concarneau in Brittany, have made it celebrated throughout the world as a delicacy. The dealers in Norway sprats—for the purpose of passing off on the public a cheap, inferior kind of fish as something much better—have recently stolen the French curers' name of "Sardine," and coolly call their sprats "Sardines." The sprats thus cured are soft and inferior in quality to the true sardines, which are a less abundant and therefore more costly species of fish. The fraudulent use in this way of the name "Sardine" has been condemned by the law courts in London, but the punishment for such fraud is so small and the profit to the fraudulent dealers is so great that our French friends have to submit to the iniquity.
CHAPTER XXXVI
SCIENCE AND THE UNKNOWN
IT is a remarkable fact that although the first efforts of the founders of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge, two hundred and fifty years ago, in this country, and of other such associations on the Continent, had the immediate effect of destroying a large amount of that fantastic superstition and credulity which had until then prevailed in all classes of society, and although that period marks the transition from the astounding and terrible nightmares of the Middle Ages to a happier condition when witchcraft, sorcery, and baseless imaginings concerning natural things gave place to knowledge founded on careful observation and experiment—yet the ugly baleful relic of savagery died hard, even in the most civilized communities.