Manuscript Location

College of Physicians of Philadelphia, The Historical Medical Library

Place of Origin

United States ➔ Pennsylvania ➔ Philadelphia

Date of Composition

1817

Description

John Syng Dorsey was a physician, a pioneering surgeon, and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, whose brief life spanned the years 1783-1817. This 64-page volume consists of notes taken on Dr. Dorsey's lectures on materia medica by one of his students, Robert Pryor Richardson. Most of the notes concern the health properties of various vegetable foods (grains, roots, fruits) and animal foods (mutton, wild game, poultry, eggs, fish, shellfish, snake, turtle, milk, dairy products), as well as the effects on these foods of various cooking  processes (pickling, in soups, roasting, broiling, frying, stewing). The health implications of various drinks are also discussed. While this volume is not a cookbook per se, it illuminates a host of 19th century American beliefs about food and health that had a direct bearing on the development of American cooking into the twentieth century.