Читать книгу The Art of Making Good Wholesome Bread of Wheat, Oats, Rye, Barley and Other Farinaceous Grains - Friedrich Christian Accum - Страница 16

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The strangest substitute for bread that has ever been employed, is a sort of white earth. The poor in the Lordship of Moscoa in Upper Lusania, have been frequently compelled to make use of this earth as a substitute for bread.

The earth is dug out of a pit where saltpetre had formerly been worked; when exposed to the rays of the sun it splits and cracks, and small globules issue from it like meal, which ferments when mixed with flour. On this earth, baked into bread, many persons have subsisted a considerable time. A similar earth is met with near Genomu, in Catalonia.

In the western parts of Luisania too, the inhabitants have a most extraordinary custom of eating a white earth, mixed with clay and salt.

The rowers also, who ply on the river Mississippi, frequently drink large quantities of muddy water, which cannot fail to leave in the stomach a considerable quantity of earth. But it cannot be doubted, that a large quantity of earthy substances taken into the stomach would prove deleterious to health.