Transcriber’s notes:

In this transcription, hyperlinks are indicated by a black dottedunderline (plus a coloured highlight when the mouse pointer hovers overthem). A red dashed underline indicates the presence of atranscriber’s comment; scrolling the mouse pointer over such textwill reveal the comment. Footnote markers in the text are hyperlinked tothe footnotes which have been relocated to the end of the book andassigned a page number in the table of contents to help locate them.Page numbers are displayed in the right margin. Because of the verysmall amount of text on some pages, the page numbers occasionally becomesuperimposed if viewed on a wide screen.

No attempt has been made to standardise the numerous inconsistenciesthroughout the text with respect to punctuation, [e.g. (No. 490,)/(No.490.)/(No. 490)/(No. 490).], spelling, case and hyphenation [e.g. P.36/p. 88, DR. MOFFETT/Dr. MUFFETT, Colton/Coulton, toothach/toothache,Head-Ach/Head-ach/Head-ache, nightmare/Night-Mare/night-mare,mouthsful/mouthfuls, scum/skum, table-spoonful/tablespooonful,Curacoa/Curaçoa, and others]. These and various archaic spellings allremain as in the original. The transcription also replicates theoriginal text in its use of upper case, lower case, small capitals, anditalics.

On the other hand, several errors, omissions and uncertainties have beencorrected after reference to the subsequent edition (3rd) of the bookfor clarification: for example, missing characters resulting fromincomplete scan images; missing quotation marks; a missing value for‘Port’ in the table on page 138; and a three-paragraphapparent ‘blockquote’ on page 141 (actually a partialfootnote that had become separated from its preceding paragraphs on page139), has been reunited with the rest of the footnote. A few incorrectpage references have been rectified.

The incorrect sequencing of the index replicates that in the originalpublication. In that era the letters i and j were interchangeable, andwords beginning with these letters are grouped together in the index.The words and abbreviations Ditto, ditto, Do., do., are usedinconsistently in the index.

Numbered items (sometimes asterisked) of the style (No. 463*) arereferences to the 3rd edition of “The Cook’s Oracle”as explained on the page that follows the table of contents.

The text contains archaic symbols previously used by apothecaries,namely, ℞ (meaning ‘Prescription take’) on pages 232and 285 and ℈ (meaning ‘scruple’ – a measure ofweight) in Footnote 104. The symbols display correctly with Firefox,Chrome and Safari browsers, but Internet Explorer sometimes fails todisplay them correctly unless its default font is changed to Lucida SansUnicode.