There may be said to be three principal types of beer--the Bavarian, Belgian, and English. The Bavarian is obtained by the infusion or decoction of sprouted barley; then by the fermentation of deposit, in tubs painted internally with resin. The varieties most appreciated are the Bock and Salvator beers. The beers of Belgium have the special character of being prepared by spontaneous fermentation, and the process is therefore slow. The principal varieties are the Lambick, the Faro, the March beer, and the Uytzd. In the English beer the must is prepared by simple infusion and the fermentation is superficial. On account of its great alcoholic richness it is easily conserved. The ale, the porter, and the stout are the chief varieties of English beer, which differ among themselves only by the diverse proportion of their ingredients and the different degrees of torrefaction of the barley, rendering it more or less brown. In France only the superficial method of fermentation is employed. In a litre of Strasburg beer one finds 5 1-4 grammes of albumen, 45 grammes of alcohol, and .091 of salts. The ordinary Bavarian beer contains three per cent. of alcohol and six and a half per cent. of nourishing extracts. The beers the most sticky to the touch are the heaviest in volume and the most nutritious. It is historical that in very olden days the Munich city fathers tried the goodness of the beer by pouring it out on a bench and then sitting down in their leather inexpressibles, and approved of it only when they remained glued to the seat. In Nuremberg there is a school of brewers, where one may learn all the mysteries of beer brewing. Certain breweries, however, pretend to possess secrets pertaining to the art known exclusively to them. For example, one family near Leipsic is said to have possessed for a century the secret which chemistry has tried in vain to discover, of making the famous Gose beer. "Good beer," says Dr. Paolo Mantegazza, a celebrated Italian writer on medicine, "is certainly one of the most healthy of alcoholic drinks. The bitter tonic, the richness of the alimentary principle which it contains, and its digestibility make it a real liquid food, which, for many temperaments, is medicine. The English beer, which is stronger in spirit than some wines, never produces on the stomach that union of irritating phenomena vulgarly called heat, and for this reason beer is often tolerated by the most weak and irritable persons, and can be drunk with advantage in grave diseases."[A] Laveran, a French physician, counsels it for consumptives, and for nervous thin people in the most diverse climates.