worth while to reproduce here, as the methods have essentially changed
since that time), he goes on to demonstrate, as the result of actual
experiment, that chocolate is a substance "very temperate, very
nourishing, and of easy digestion; very proper to repair the exhausted
spirits and decayed strength; and very suitable to preserve the health
and prolong the lives of old men....

"I could produce several instances," he says, "in favor of this
excellent nourishment; but I shall content myself with two only, equally
certain and decisive, in proof of its goodness. The first is an
experiment of chocolate's being taken for the only nourishment--made by
a surgeon's wife of Martinico. She had lost, by a very deplorable
accident, her lower jaw, which reduced her to such a condition that she
did not know how to subsist. She was not capable of taking anything
solid, and not rich enough to live upon jellies and nourishing broths.
In this strait she determined to take three dishes of chocolate,
prepared after the manner of the country, one in the morning, one at
noon, and one at night. There chocolate is nothing else but cocoa
kernels dissolved in hot water, with sugar, and seasoned with a bit of
cinnamon. This new way of life succeeded so well that she has lived a
long while since, more lively and robust than before this accident.

"I had the second relation from a gentleman of Martinico, and one of my
friends not capable of a falsity. He assured me that in his neighborhood
an infant of four months old unfortunately lost his nurse, and its
parents not being able to put it to another, resolved, through
necessity, to feed it with chocolate. The success was very happy, for
the infant came on to a miracle, and was neither less healthy nor less
vigorous than those who are brought up by the best nurses.