Genre:

Extract, Essay

Publications extracted:

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine

Subjects:

Nutrition, Domestic Economy, Class, Pharmaceuticals, Adulteration, Scientific Practitioners

People mentioned:

Edward Cocker, William Kitchiner

Publications cited:

Rumford 1796–[1812]

    The essay addresses the different classes of Job's comforters. Observes that the poor 'seem really to have been set up as a sort of target for ingenuity to try its hand upon; and, from Papin, the Bone Digester, down to Cobbett, the Bone Grubber,—from Wesley, who made cheap physic, and added to every prescription "a quart of cold water," to Hunt who sells roasted wheat (vice coffee) five hundred per cent above its cost—an absolute army of projectors, and old women has, from time to time, been popping at them'. Criticizes Benjamin Thompson (Count von Rumford) at length for his writings on how to feed the poor at the cheapest rate.