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Honey

THE name Honey has been derived from the Hebrew word ghoneg, which means literally " delight." In the Book of Genesis it stands stated that the pleasant Land of Canaan, where Abraham dwelt, was "flowing with milk and honey." Rumilius Pollio, who enjoyed marvellous health, and vitality, in ancient Rome, was presented when over a hundred years old to the Emperor Augustus, who enquired what was the secret of such wondrous longevity. Pollio answered, "Interus melle, exterus oleo," the eating of honey within, and anointing by oil without. Such Honey is the nectar of flowers, partaking closely of their flavours and odours, whilst varying in taste, colour and scent, as well as in medicinal attributes, according to the species of plant from which it is gathered. Pure Honey consists, when collected from the comb of beehives, partly of crystallised glucose, which sinks to the bottom of the jar, and partly of a liquid portion above, which is fruit sugar, or lævulose, almost identical with the brown syrup of the sugar cane, but less easy of digestion. The glucose is analogous to grape sugar, all ready for direct absorption into the blood, after being eaten, whereas cane sugar must be first masticated in the mouth with the saliva, and become converted somewhat slowly into honey-sugar before it can be similarly utilized for the wants of the body. In this way the immediately nutritive properties of Honey beyond those of cane sugar are made manifest; and it can be understood with equal readiness why grapes, identical with honey in the matter of their sugar, have a speedy effect to meet the outgoings of waste by fever, or fatigue, straightway with reparative elements ready made, instead of by a roundabout conversion, as with cane sugar. The odour of honey is due to a volatile oil, associated with a yellow colouring matter, melichroin, which is separated by the floral nectaries, and becomes bleached on exposure to the sunlight. A minute quantity of an animal acid lends additional curative value of an antiseptic nature to honey. Pure Honey contains of glucose about twenty parts in one hundred, but being deficient in lime, and in iron, it cannot be considered a perfect food; nevertheless, mothers would certainly be wise to make a free use of it in the nursery, and it should appear more constantly on the general breakfast table. Essentially it is a solution of dextrose, and lævulose, with volatile oils, and occasionally some cane sugar. Virgin honey is that which flows spontaneously from the comb when the cells are uncapped from the hive. Wild honey is the product of bees in their wild state, or when not kept by man. King Solomon said in his wisdom, "hast thou found it ? Eat no more than is sufficient, lest thou surfeit; for it is not good to eat much honey" (Proverbs xxv. 16).

It was Aristœus, a pupil of Chiron, who first gathered Honey from the comb; and this was the basis of the seasoning of Apicius; whilst Pythagoras, who lived to be ninety, took latterly only bread and honey. Tacitus tells that our German progenitors gave credit for their long lives, and their great strength, to the mead, or Honey-beer, on which they regaled themselves. "Whoever wishes," said an old, and classic maxim, "to preserve his health should eat every morning before breakfast young onions with honey." 66 There was an old man of Kilkenny Who never had more than a penny:

He spent all that money in onions and honey, That knowing old man of Kilkenny."

Seeing that good honey contains heat-forming sugar, which is so very quickly assimilated and taken up into the blood, some combination therewith of other food less easily absorbed is generally desirable; otherwise the digestion may be upset by too speedy a surfeit of bodily caloric, and energy. Thus the bread and honey of time-honoured memory is a sound form of support, as likewise the traditional milk and honey of the Old Testament Canaan. Such a food may be prepared by taking a bowl of new milk, and breaking into it some light wheaten bread, together with some fresh white honeycomb. The mixture will be found both pleasant, and light of digestion. As a heat producer by way of food, one pound of honey is equal to two pounds of butter; and it may sometimes be beneficially substituted for cod-liver oil, when this cannot be tolerated by the patient. In coughs and colds Honey makes a useful adjunct to other expectorants, whilst being at the same time helpfully laxative. Samuel Pepys tells in his diary (1660), "Rode to Huntsmore, and here I lay; took a spoonful of honey, and a nutmeg, scraped, for my cold, by Mr. Bowyer's direction." Nevertheless, when it is old, honey will at times cause indigestion through an excessive production of lactic acid in the stomach, and some superficial soreness within the mouth will ensue; it being at the same time familiarly known that honey (particularly if mixed with some borax), will quickly cure a state of thrush in the mouth ensuing through other derangement of the health. In a Song of Sixpence, as asked for by Sir Toby Belch, (Twelfth Night), "The Queen was in her parlour Eating Bread and Honey." "Mel mandit, panemque, morans regina culinâ, Dulcia plebeia non comedenda nuru." (Black currant jelly in teaspoonful doses is useful for a child when suffering from thrush and a sore mouth. The fruit possesses a volatile bitter oil, residing chiefly in the skins, this oil giving its aromatic flavour to the berries.) A plain cake of currants, or seed, made with Honey in place of sugar, is a pleasant addition to the tea-table, and a useful preventive of constipation. Among the ancient Germans, Honey from the sacred ash was the first food put to the lips of a new-born babe. Likewise in the Scotch Highlands, at the birth of a child, the mother will take a green stick of ash, one end of which she thrusts into the fire, and while it is burning she will receive in a spoon the sap which oozes out from the other end of the stick, and will give this to the infant as its first food. Such is the kind of honey secreted by plants. Another sort is the product of leaf hoppers, or plant-lice (especially the Pulvinaris) which extract the sweet sap from the trees, and elaborate it within themselves into honey dew, or honey rore. "Yet where these hops and honey fall We'll lick the syruped leaves, And tell the bees that their's is gall, To this upon the greaves."

DRAYTON (Boughs and Branches).

Our ancestors concocted from honey boiled with water and exposed to the sun, (after adding chopped raisins, lemon-peel, and other condiments), a famous fermented drink called mead, or (when the finer honey is used) metheglin, combining certain herbs so as to confer special flavours. In The Closet Opened, of Sir Kenelm Digby, knt. (1645), is given a recipe for the metheglin of Sir Thomas Gower, then Marshal of Berwick. "Five gallons of Honey to be poured into forty of small ale, and while still warm to be stirred exceedingly well with a clean arm till they be perfectly incorporated." Likewise the old Teutons prepared a Honey wine, and made it a practice that this should be drunk for the first thirty days after marriage by a newly wedded pair, from which custom has been derived the familiar honeymoon, or the month after the wedding. Sometimes hops and yeast were also employed for making mead. In the present day, cottage beekeepers about Hampshire, and elsewhere, compound a homely sort of mead from odd pieces of comb, with refuse honey, and from the brood left therein after having taken their bees in the autumn. This ferments of itself by reason of the pollen in the combs; and the Honey beer, or Hum, as the cottagers call it, has been found to contain a valuable curative principle derived from the poison of bee stings, and proving of specific use against dropsical effusions, erysipelas, and nettlerash, also for certain forms of sore throat. Cases can be reliably adduced of a lasting cure thereby to cardiac dropsy, which was extreme, likewise of hydrocephalic effusion in children, and of dropsy from suppressed action of the kidneys. The sting of a bee or wasp will sometimes inflict a shock on the heart, even fatal in its results, by rapid absorption of the poison. The stinging secretion ejected from the poison gland of bees is chiefly formic acid (which is known to exercise considerable antiseptic effects). This is found to be present in well-preserved honey, but not in freshly gathered nectar: evidently it has been added by the bees to help preserve the honey. The said sting-poison contains three principles, one convulsive, one stupefying, and one which excites inflammation; thus the extraordinary fact appears that the poison embodies two ingredients, one of which is opposed to the other. When a person is stung within the throat by a bee or a wasp, the best thing to do is to chew an onion, keeping the pulp at the back of the mouth, and swallowing it slowly; thereby swelling of the throat becomes prevented. Calverley describes in humorous lines the "bottling of wasps," by a gardener :- He hath found an old bottle, I cannot say where, He hath bound it with skill to the back of a chair, Full of mild ale so balmy, and sugar so brown, And he'll trap them by dozens, I'll bet you a crown." As to "Mum" or "Hum," writes Harrison (1600) in his History of England, "there is a kind of swish swash made also in Essex, and divers other places, with honeycomb and water, which homely country wives putting some pepper among, and a little other spice, call "mead." Very good in mine opinion for such as love to be loose-bodied at large, or a little eased of the cough; otherwise it differeth as much from the true metheglin as chalk from cheese. Truly it is nothing else but the washings of the combs when the honey is wrung out, and one of the best things that I know belonging thereto is that they spend but little labour and less cost in making of the same, and therefore no great loss if it were never occupied." Hum was so named, most probably, from its causing a buzzing, or humming, in the head. "Lord, what should I ail!

What a cold I have over my stomach; would I had some Hum!" FLETCHER (The Wildgoose Chase).

In the thirteenth century a certain mixture of Honey and water was used for applying to "a stynkynge wounde, to be washed with, that is honey and water sodden together with mirre."

When England was Roman Catholic, a superior mead was brewed from pure new honey, beekeeping being then a profitable business owing to the demand for the beeswax wherewith candles might be manufactured for the religionists; honey was therefore plentiful, and could be readily had for making the best liquor. Then came the Reformation, bringing discouragement and depression to the apiary; and beer from barley was in vogue, the mead being superseded. But the cottage mead is to-day just what it was when Wamba the son of Witless had it for his supper. For making superior "white mead": To every gallon of water put a pint of the best Honey, and half a pound of loaf sugar, stir in the whites of eggs-three or four to the gallon, beat to a froth, and boil it as long as any scum arises; when it is cold, work it with yeast, and to each gallon put the juice and peel of a large lemon; stop it up when it has done working, and bottle it after ten days. An old and musical name for mead was hydromel. More recently as we read- "When the young players get to Islington They fondly think that all the world's their own:

Where many a man at variance with his wife With soft'ning mead, and cheese-cake ends the strife." Art of Cookery, 1708.

Beeswax consists chemically of myrosin, cerolein, and cerotic acid. Mrs. Earle quotes Dr. Dabbs, of Shanklin, concerning the cure of troublesome corns with beeswax. An old wife when on her deathbed communicated to the said doctor this wonderful cure, for which she had obtained a local notoriety in the Isle of Wight. "For curing karns," said she, "you takes beeswax, and you drops it hot right on the karn, and covers 'un; then yo' puts on a bit of swealed rag, and lets 'un set for fower days; then you pulls 'un out after you've a soaked your foot in water hot enough for ye to bear; and when ee's out you'll see a big hole where 'ee was." It may be observed that Dr. Haig has shown that simplicity of diet will do much to prevent, and cure corns.

To prepare a Honey Cake: Take half a breakfastcupful of brown sugar, one breakfastcupful of rich sour cream, two breakfastcupfuls of flour, and half a teaspoonful of carbonate of soda in powder, adding honey to taste. Mix the sugar and cream together, dredge in the flour with as much honey as will flavour the mixture agreeably; stir well, that all the ingredients may be thoroughly mixed; add the carbonate of soda, and beat the cake well for five more minutes; put it into a buttered tin, and bake for from half to three quarters of an hour; it may be eaten warm. For making Honey Cakes at the Cape: One and a half pounds of flour, half a pound of sugar, three quarters of a pint of honey. Boil the sugar and honey together; add one teaspoonful of cloves, and two teaspoonfuls of cinnamon pounded; then remove these from the fire; add half an ounce of potash, and one tablespoonful of brandy; mix the flour with half a teaspoonful of soda; then mix the hot syrup and flour well together, working the dough thoroughly with the hands, and roll out thinly. Put into a buttered pan, and bake in a slow oven for from half to one hour, and cut into squares. Preserved citron cut into strips, and mixed with the dough, improves the flavour. These cakes will keep for some time.

Honey, as explained by Dr. Hutchison, is richer in sugar than any malt extract, and is preferable thereto, besides being cheaper. To be used for medicinal purposes "kowno" honey, produced in the linden forests of Lithuania, is the most famous. HOPS (See HERBS).