Transcriber’s Note: This text is reproducedwith its original printing errors intact, save for minor amendments topunctuation, capitalisation and word spacing. The author was prone tomisquoting poetry, the typesetter was apparently not being paid enoughto ensure accuracy, and it doesn’t seem a proofreader was asked toparticipate at all. The best laid schemes o’ “mince” and men have indeedgone aft agley.
OAT MEAL
THE
War Winner
BY
J. R. Grieve, M. D.
Acting Assistant Surgeon
U. S. Army, 1865
Copyright Applied for. Price Ten Cents.
“OATMEAL”
BEING GLIMPSES AN REMINISENCES OF SCOTLANDAND ITS PEOPLE.
By J. R. Grieve, M.D.
INTRODUCTION.
At the present time when every one is being urged tobend every energy toward the conservation of food supplies,it is surprising to me that so little has been writtenin behalf of the extraordinary value of oatmeal as a dieton which people can live and continue more healthy thanon any other cereal in the world.
I wish to present facts, not theories. I wish to tell ofwhat I know personally on this subject. I have not consultedany of the laboratories of research or taken forgranted any data from the many-published statistics of individualfood sufficiency for sustaining life, but I have onlytaken facts and invite my readers to form their own conclusions.
My father was a successful farmer in Perthshire, Scotland,and employed quite a number of ploughmen. His menwere always big strapping fellows, weighing on an averagefrom one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventypouds and as strong as oxen. None of those men ever sawa two-bushel sack of grain because we never had such sacks.What they were acquainted with and were accustomed tohandle were four-bushel sacks of wheat, weighing sixty-fourpounds per bushel, barley weighing fifty-six poundsper bushel. These sacks they would carry on their backand load on their carts and, after being hauled to the city,would again shoulder them and carry them up two andsometimes three flights of stairs in the warehouses. Therewere few elevators in those days.
Now what had those men for breakfast that morning?Certainly not beefsteak, ham and eggs, toast, or biscuits.No, they had a large bowlful of bcrose. Each man takes hislarge wooden bowl and puts into it three or four handfuls ofoatmeal, a big pinch of salt, then pours boiling water on it,stirs it with the handle of his spoon, adds sweet milk, andeats his breakfast. When the noon hour comes he goesthrough the same process; and after the work is finishedfor the day he generally has a bowl of oatmeal parridge.
The whole time occupied is probably ten minutes. Thenafter smoking a pipe for ten minute more he is ready fora day of strenuous work. Each man possesses a half-gallontin bucket, and that is filled at the dairy every morningbefore breakfast with sweet milk, and that lasts him forthe day. No labor is too hard for those men. They canstand any strain put before them and never complain ofbeing hungry. I never heard the least complaint of indigeston,and the doctor would have starved to death if hehad depended on these ploughmen for patients. The allowanceof meal is seventy pounds every four weeks, andthat is all you require to give them.