A Pioneer of the Potato

New Zealand Tablet, 15 April 1915, Page 11

A Pioneer of the Potato

Prance recently celebrated the centenary of Antoine Parmentier, who popularised a vegetable which has since become one of the staple foods of European countries— humble potato. Parmentier was not only a public benefactor, but a philanthropist with scientific attainments. The potato had already been brought to Europe from Peru in the fifteenth century, but was looked upon, as are many novelties, as something to be not only avoided, but dreaded. A French Cabinet Minister, Turgot, tried to persuade the people of Limoges to make a trial of the new food, but he had little success owing to the rumor that it was poisonous. Although he had potatoes served daily at his own table, nothing could overcome popular prejudice. Parmentier wrote a treatise setting forth the chemical properties of the food, and planted a considerable area in the plain of Sablou with potatoes. lie was already known as the author of a treatise on vegetables, written after the famine of 1769, in which he proved that nutritive starch was contained in plants as well as in grain. His experiments with the potato were watched with curiosity, but when flowers instead of fruit appeared on the plant he was ridiculed and derided. Nothing daunted, Parmentier made a bouquet of the blossoms and presented them to the lying, Louis XVI., who forthwith put one in his buttonhole, and promised to taste the vegetable, thereby setting an example to his courtiers. The palace cook then took the matter in hand, and produced a variety of appetising dishes. But it was only after Napoleon that the homely potato began its assured and honorable career, whether as a component of luxurious fare with elaborate adjuncts on the tables of the rich, or as the practical, wholesome food of the poorer classes. It is a fecund product of the kindly earth, giving health and satisfaction to the digger, who turns up on his spade a dozen at a time. Parmentier was a native of Mont Didier, in Normandy. Born in poor circumstances, and early orphaned, he devoted himself to the care of his widowed mother and younger brothers. At eighteen years of age he was apprenticed to an apothecary, and, as a member of the medical staff of the French army, went through the hardships of the Seven Years’ War in Germany. Studious by nature and anxious to improve himself, he worked at Frankfort with the famous physician Meyer. On returning to France he devoted himself to chemical experiments and botany. Had he obtained a following for his theories on the nourishment of the people, the Great Revolution itself might have been averted. It is irrefutable that the chief factor of discontent was famine, and when the corn crops failed ' there was no substitute. When the monarchy was swept away ignorance and intolerance still main-

• tained their hold over Frenchmen. The Republicans were supercilious toward Parmentier.’s remedy for .economic distress. Tobacco and alcohol were more readily accepted by mankind than the beneficent potato. v