"
Here, at last, we have come to the end of Sir Kenelm the amateur. If he was
an empiric, so were all the doctors of his time; and he may be described as
a professional unpaid physician who carried on a frequently interrupted
practice. That he did not publish his receipts himself does not reflect on
his own idea of their importance. They had a wide circulation among his
friends. And, as I have pointed out, he never showed great eagerness to
publish. Such works as appeared in his lifetime were evidently printed at
the request of learned societies, or by friends to whom they were
dedicated, or by White.
The distance between the healer and the cook has grown to be immense in
recent times. The College of Physicians and Mary Jane in the kitchen are
not on nodding terms--though one sees faint signs of an effort to bridge
the wide gap. But in the seventeenth century the gap can hardly be said to
have existed at all. At the back of the doctor is plainly seen the figure
of the herbalist and simpler, who appear again prominently in the
still-room and the kitchen, by the side of great ladies and great
gentlemen, bent on making the best and the most of the pleasures of the
table no doubt, but quite as much on the maintenance of health as of
hospitality.
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