Chocolate and Broma.—Broma, an admirable preparation, alike
agreeable to the well or sick, has acquired a reputation which we
think it certainly deserves. A few years since, a great manufacturer
of broma, Mr. Baker, of Dorchester, Mass., sought the opinions of many
medical gentlemen of distinction, for the purpose of having an unob-
jectionable food for invalids, and he was assured that he had fully
succeeded. Hospitals, infirmaries, and households generally, should
always be provided with it. When gruel, arrowroot, groats, barley,
starch, rice, farina, and many other things ordinarily resorted to for
patients are of no utility, the broma is sometimes relished. It is
believed that those who use it as a daily beverage will have manifest
dietetic advantages over the consumers of tea and coffee. We see it
stated that during the last summer those individuals who were habitu-
ally using chocolate or broma, neither had attacks of cholera or dysen-
teric affections, while others in the same families, taking their daily
potations of tea, coffee, or simple cold> water, where the sufferers, if.
any. We cannot vouch for the truth of this, but it has recalled to
mind the statement that the oil dealers in London have been free from
cholera or the choleroid symptoms. And it has been further observed
here in Boston, that persons who were takingcod-liver oil for chronic
difficulties, during the prevalence of the late epidemic, were not
affected by it. Vegetable oil in the first instance, and animal oil in
the last, taken internally, would appear, by these statements, to have
secured those who took them from the shafts of the pestilence. It is
certainly a point well worth while to determine, whether the choco-
late drinkers have been secure in other infected cities.—Boston J\led.
and Surgical Journal.