Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/183

Rh the Emperor Vitellius could eat a thousand of these bivalves at a meal. What vitals must this Vitellius have had! Who would dare under-take to victual such a glutton as that? It is said of that gentle wag, Charles Lamb, that, on a certain occasion, the omnibus in which he rode was stopped by a man, who poked in his head and bluffly asked, "All full in there?" To which Lamb meekly made response, "I don't know how it is with the rest—but that last piece of oyster-pie did the business for me!" But this Vitellius was not so easily done



for as that comes to. Having engulfed his fill of these ostrean innocents, this royal gourmand would open the sluice-gate of his kingly maw, and cause a slave to tickle the fauces with a peacock's feather. This, acting as an elevator, effected a full discharge of the beastly cargo of that carnal vessel. This done, that ostreaceous appetite would load up afresh. Would not the evertible stomach of a star-fish have been an inestimable blessing to that imperial beast?

—Are oysters good to eat? Said Montaigne, "To be subject to colic, or deny one's self oysters, presents two evils to choose from." This is very fine for Montaigne, but it is a libel for all that. Besides, he was a sickly man at best of times. Says Reveille-Paris: "There is no alimentary substance, not even excepting bread, which does not produce indigestion under given circumstances, but oysters never. We may eat them to-day, to-morrow, eat them always, and in profusion, without fear of indigestion." It is said that the first Napoleon always ate oysters on the eve of his great battles, if they could be got. Says Figuier: "The oyster may thus be said to be the palm and glory of the table. It is considered the very perfection of digestive aliment....The small proportion of nutritive matter explains the extreme digestibility of the oyster." It "is nothing more than water slightly gelatinized." But, if we would have authority the most recent, and thoroughly trustworthy, let us go to that little book in the "International Scientific Series," "Foods," by Edward Smith, M.D. Here we have the dictum of the physiologist: "The oyster is not a food of high nutritive value, but is nevertheless useful to the sick, while its delicacy of flavor leads to its selection when other foods are rejected. The more usual mode is to eat it when uncooked; and it is very doubtful whether cooking increases its digestibility. It is, however, possible that the flavor of scalloped may be preferred to that of the raw oysters, or that the vinegar which is usually eaten with the latter may be disliked, or may disagree with the stomach, but, with