during the “French and Indian War,” and received the rank of lieutenant-general in February 1759. He died in Kittery, Maine, on the 6th of July in the same year.
See Usher Parsons, Life of Sir William Pepperrell, Bart. (Cambridge, Mass., 1855), based on the family papers.
PEPPER TREE, a tree which has no proper connexion with the true pepper (Piper), and is really a member of the natural order Anacardiaceae, being known botanically as Schinus Molle, from the Peruvian name Mulli. It is a native of tropical South America and is grown in the open air in the south of Europe. It is a small tree with unequally pinnate leaves, the segments linear, entire or finely saw-toothed, the terminal one longer than the rest, and all filled with volatile oil stored in large cells or cysts, which are visible to the naked eye and appear like holes when the leaf is held up to the light. When the leaves are thrown upon the surface of water the resinous or oily fluid escapes with such force as violently to agitate them. The flowers are small, whitish, arranged in terminal clusters and polygamous or unisexual, with five sepals, as many petals, ten stamens (as large as the petals in the case of the male flower, very small in the female flower, but in both springing from a cushion-like disk surrounding the base of the three-celled ovary). The style is simple or three cleft, and the fruit a small, globose, pea-like drupe with a bony kernel enclosing a single seed. The fleshy portion of the fruit has a hot aromatic flavour from the abundance of the resin it contains. The resin is used for medicinal purposes by the Peruvians, and has similar properties to mastic. The Japan pepper tree is Xanthoxylum piperitum the fruits of which have also a hot taste. Along the Riviera the tree known as Melia Azedarach, or the “Pride of India,” is also incorrectly called the pepper tree by visitors.
PEPSIN, an enzyme or ferment obtained by drying the mucous lining of the fresh and healthy stomach of a pig, sheep or calf. As used in medicine it consists of a light yellow-brown or white powder or of pale yellow translucent grains or scales. It is only slightly soluble in water and alcohol. Pepsin is used to help gastric digestion in old people and in those in whom there is a deficient secretion of the gastric juice. It is useful in chronic catarrhal conditions of the stomach, the dyspepsia of alcoholism, and in gastric ulcer and cancer of the stomach.
Pepsin digests the albumens but is useless in the digestion of fats or carbohydrates. It may also be used to predigest albuminous foods. The following is a method of peptonizing beef. Take 14 ℔ of minced raw lean beef, 12 pint of water containing 0·2% of hydrochloric acid, place in a jar with 30 grs. of pepsin, set in a warm place at 110° F. for 3 hours, stirring occasionally. Then quickly boil it. It is usually unnecessary to strain it, as the meat is reduced to a fine almost impalpable powder which is readily assimilated. Many varieties of proprietary peptonizing tablets are on the market and are convenient for the preparation of peptonized milk. The following is a method of preparing it. Take a clean glass quart bottle, pour in a pint of perfectly fresh cold milk, then add a teacupful of cold water in which a peptonizing tablet has been dissolved. Submerge the bottle in a can of water at 100° F. for from 5 to 10 minutes, take out the bottle and place on ice to prevent the further action of the pepsin. If no ice is convenient bring the milk to a boil for the same purpose. If the action of the pepsin be continued for a much longer period the milk becomes bitter to the taste from the development of excess of peptones. Predigested foods should not be used over a long period or the digestive functions of the stomach may atrophy from disuse.
Pancreatic solution, derived from the pancreas of a pig digested in alcohol, has the power of converting starch into sugar, and albumen and fibrin into peptones. It only acts in an alkaline medium and at a temperature under 140° F. If used to peptonize milk sodium bicarbonate should be added. Many commercial preparations are on the market. Trypsin, the principal ferment of the pancreas, also changes proteids into peptones.
PEPUSCH, JOHN CHRISTOPHER (1667–1752), English musician, of German parentage, was born in Berlin. He began his study of music at an early age, and about 1700 left Berlin and went to England, where he had various engagements, and where he went on with his researches into ancient music. He composed a number of church services and instrumental pieces, besides music for masques and plays, but he is best known in connexion with the founding in 1710 of the Academy of Ancient Music. In 1713 he was made a Mus.D. of Oxford, and in 1746 F.R.S. In 1718 he married Margarita de l’Épine (d. 1746), who, as the first Italian to sing in England, was described in 1692 in the London Gazette simply as “the Italian woman.” Pepusch died in London on the 20th of July 1752. His Treatise on Harmony (anonymous 1st ed. 1730) is believed to have been an embodiment of his rules drafted by his pupil Viscount Paisley, afterwards earl of Abercorn.
PEPYS, SAMUEL (1633–1703), English diarist, was born on the 23rd of February 1633. The place of his birth is not known. The name was pronounced in the 17th century, and has always been pronounced by the family, “Peeps.” The family can be traced in Cambridgeshire as far back as the reign of Edward I. They rose by slow degrees from the class of small copyholders and yeoman farmers to the position of gentry. In 1563 they had a recognized right to use a coat of arms. John Pepys, Samuel’s father, was a younger son, who, like other gentlemen in his position in that age, went into trade. He was for a time established as a tailor in London, but in 1661 he inherited a small estate at Brampton near Huntingdon, where he lived during the last years of his life.
Samuel was fifth child and second son of a large family, all of whom he survived. His first school was in Huntingdon, but he was afterwards sent to St Paul’s in London, where he remained till 1650. While at St Paul’s he was an eye-witness of the execution of King Charles I. On the 21st of June in that year his name was entered as a sizar on the books of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, but it was transferred to Magdalene on the 1st of October. On the 5th of March he entered into residence, and he remained there till 1654 or 1655. He obtained a Spendluffe scholarship a month after entering, and one on Dr John Smith's foundation on the 14th of October 1653. Nothing is known of his university career except that on the 21st of October 1653 he was publicly admonished with another undergraduate for having been “scandalously overserved with drink.” At Cambridge he wrote a romance, Love is a Cheat, which he afterwards destroyed. On the 1st of December 1655 he was married at St Margaret's church, Westminster, to Elizabeth, daughter of Alexander Marchant, Sieur de St Michel, a French Huguenot exile from Anjou who had married an English lady named Kingsmill. Pepys had at this time no independent means, and probably relied on his cousins, the Montagues, to provide for him. On the 26th of March 1658 he was cut for the stone, an event which he always kept in memory by a solemn anniversary. In 1659 he went as secretary with his cousin, Edward Montagu, afterwards earl of Sandwich, on a voyage to the Sound. On his return he was engaged as a clerk under Mr (afterwards Sir) Edward Downing, one of the four tellers of the exchequer. In 1660 he accompanied his cousin, who commanded the fleet which brought King Charles II. back from exile. In that year, by the interest of his cousin, he was named “clerk of the acts” in the navy office, but was compelled to buy off a competitor, one Barlow, by an annuity of £100.
Pepys was now fairly established in the official career which led him to honour. On the 1st of January 1660 he had begun his second and hidden life as a diarist. It is in that capacity that he is of such unique interest. But if his diary had never been written, or had been lost, he would still be a notable man, as an able official, the author of valuable Memoirs of the Navy (1690), an amateur musician and protector of musicians, a gentleman who took an enlightened interest in science, and was elected president of the Royal Society. To his contemporary diarist, John Evelyn, he appeared as “a worthy, industrious and curious person.” It is true that Andrew Marvel accused him of having accumulated a fortune of £40,000 by “illegal wages.” But this charge, made in a pamphlet called A List of the principal Labourers in the great design of Popery and Arbitrary Power, was attributed to political animosity. To the world he appeared as an honourable and religious man, and so he would seem to have been to us if he had not recorded in his diary all those weaknesses of character and sins of the flesh which other men are most careful to conceal.
His place of clerk to the Navy Board was equivalent to the
