Wheat. Extent of climate favorable to it. Injured by improper tillage. Removal of impurities. Washing of grain. Separation of the bran from the nutrient particles improper. Ancient Roman bread. Public bakers. Use of bad flour. Adulterations. Poisonous agents used to disguise them.
Among the materials used for making bread in our country—and, in fact, of all the known productions of the vegetable kingdom in any country, wheat is decidedly the best; and it is a remarkable fact, that wheat comes nearer to man than perhaps any other plant, in its power of becoming adapted to different climates, over a wide extent of the earth’s surface, so that it may almost be said that wherever the human species can flourish, there wheat can be cultivated.
“It is not certainly known,” says Prof. Thomson, “in what country wheat was first produced. Mr. Bruce informs us that he found it growing wild in Abyssinia; and in his opinion, that kingdom is the native country of the plant. It would seem,” continues the Professor, “to be originally an African plant, since it thrives best in Barbary and Egypt; and perhaps the mountains of Abyssinia, though within the torrid zone, may not differ much in point of climate, from the more northern plains of Egypt. Wheat is perhaps cultivated over a greater extent of the globe than any other plant. Excellent crops are raised as far north as Sweden, in latitude 60°; it is cultivated in the East Indies, considerably within the limits of the torrid zone; and in the North of Hindostan, it constitutes a chief article in the food of the inhabitants. In India, however, the plant seems to have deteriorated. It is always dwarfish, and the crop is said to be less abundant than in more northern climates.” Yet a cold climate is not most genial to the nature of this plant. “The wheat of France is superior to that of England; the wheat of Italy is still better than that of France; and perhaps the best of all is raised in Barbary and Egypt.”
Excellent wheat is raised in the southern, and western, and middle portions of the United States; and even in the northern and eastern parts of New England, very fine crops have been produced.
But the wheat and other cultivated products of the vegetable kingdom appropriated to the nourishment of man, like those on which our domestic animals subsist, are too generally, in civilized life, very considerably deteriorated, as to their wholesomeness, by the improper tillage of the soil. I have no doubt that it is true, as stated by those who have made the experiment, that the flour of wheat, raised on a cultivated soil recently dressed with crude, stable manure, may readily be distinguished by its odor, from the flour of wheat raised on a new and undepraved soil, or from that raised on a cultivated soil which has been dressed with properly digested manure. And if such and similar results of improper tillage can become the sources of serious evil to the human family, through their effects on the flesh of animals which man devours, and on the milk and butter which he consumes, surely the immediate effects of such a deteriorated vegetable aliment on the human system, must be very considerable.
They who have never eaten bread made of wheat, recently produced by a pure virgin soil, have but a very imperfect notion of the deliciousness of good bread; such as is often to be met with in the comfortable log houses in our western country. It is probably true that the new soil, in its virgin purity, before it becomes exhausted by tillage, and debauched by the means which man uses to enrich and stimulate it, produces most, if not all kinds of vegetables appropriate for human aliment, in a more perfect and healthy state, than any soil which has been long under cultivation, can be made to do. Nevertheless, by a proper application of physiological principles to agriculture, many of the evils which now result from improper tillage may easily be avoided, and the quality of all those vegetable substances which enter into the diet of man may be very greatly improved, both in regard to wholesomeness and deliciousness.
But while the people of our country are so entirely given up as they are at present, to gross and promiscuous feeding on the dead carcasses of animals, and to the untiring pursuits of wealth, it is perhaps wholly in vain for a single individual to raise his voice on a subject of this kind. The farmer will continue to be most eager to increase the number of his acres, and to extort from those acres the greatest amount of produce, with the least expense of tillage, and with little or no regard to the quality of that produce in relation to the physiological interests of man; while the people generally, are contented to gratify their depraved appetites on whatever comes before them, without pausing to inquire whether their indulgences are adapted to preserve or to destroy their health and life. Yet if some one does not raise a voice upon this subject which shall be heard and heeded, there will soon reach us, as a nation, a voice of calamity which we shall not be able to shut our ears against, albeit we may in the perverseness of our sensualism, incorrigibly persist in disregarding its admonitions, till the deep chastisements of outraged nature shall reach the very “bone and marrow” of the human constitution, and fill our land with such a living rottenness, as now in some other portions of the earth, renders human society odious and abominable.
Whether, therefore, my voice shall be heard and heeded or not, I will obey the dictates of my sense of duty, and solemnly declare that this subject demands the prompt and earnest attention of every agriculturist and of every friend to the common cause of humanity; for it is most certain, that until the agriculture of our country is conducted in strict accordance with physiological truth, it is not possible for us to realize those physical, and intellectual, and moral, and social, and civil blessings for which the human constitution and our soil and climate are naturally capacitated.
When proper attention has been paid to the character of the wheat itself, the next thing is to see that it is thoroughly cleansed.
Sometimes, in consequence of the peculiarities of the season, or climate, or soil, or some other cause, there will be a species of disease affecting the wheat and other grains; and this may be of such a character as not easily to be removed nor counteracted by any means; but more generally the rust, and smut, and dust, which attach themselves to the skin of the grain, may, by proper care, be so far removed, as at least to render the meal or flour far more pure and wholesome than it otherwise would be. And here let me remark, that they are greatly deceived, who suppose that the bolting cloth which separates the fine flour from the outer skin or bran, also separates the impurities attached to the outer skin from the flour. By the process of grinding, these impurities are rubbed from the outer skin, and made quite as fine as any portion of the flour, and for the most part pass with the fine flour through the bolting cloth.