ON STIMULANTS. 



43 



addition of something which shall give the wine a 

 positive quality of dryness. In every case, a good 

 sherry is soft to the mouth, and when a sherry 

 leaves in the mouth a sense of dryness, and 

 the tongue or palate rough, it is perfectly certain 

 that you are not drinking a natural dry wine, no 

 matter what price you hive paid for it. Now, 

 these astringent matters added to sherries are 

 exceedingly unwholesome, for, besides the hurtful 

 qualities of the original bad wine to which they 

 are added, they tend to diminish the activity of 

 the secreting organs, and so retain in the blood 

 the pernicious compound of which they form part. 

 The following remarks on dry sherries are taken 

 from one of a series of letters on " Spanish Vine- 

 yards," etc., published in the Pall Mall Gazelle, 

 in October and November, 18*75 : 



" Four different kinds of dry Jerez wines are 

 shipped to England : natural wines, understood to 

 contain no added spirit ; vintage wines, the prod- 

 uce of individual vineyards, and occasionally of 

 specific years ; solera wines, such as line amontil- 

 lado and olorosa ; and, finally, blended wines. The 

 natural wines of which I speak are not the wines 

 commonly advertised in England at low rates under 

 that designation. Jerez wines, perfectly free from 

 spirit, cannot possibly be sold cheap in England, 

 because they require to be at least five years old ; 

 whereas the wines offered as natural are generally 

 young, unripe wines, whose fermentation has not 

 yet terminated, and which come far more frequent- 

 ly from Seville or La Mancha than from the Jerez 

 district. Such wines are necessarily unwhole- 

 some, for heat revives the fermentative action, 

 which completes itself in that delicate organism 

 — the human stomach." 



The poor man's ideal of wine is port. It is 

 sweet, it is fiery, and it has a good, rich color ! 

 But, of all the hurtful mixtures that are sold to 

 the poor man, public-house port is, perhaps, the 

 worst. I need not enumerate the various sub- 

 stances with which it is adulterated, but many of 

 these are astringents, and check the action of the 

 secreting organs. Good, sound port is useful in 

 some forms of illness, but its palatableness makes 

 the poor much too eager for it. A method of re- 

 moving the attractiveness of port wine when given 

 to the poor is amusingly described in those clever 

 sketches of parsons' wives, published under the 

 title of " The Owlet of Owlstone Edge." The 

 particular parson's wife in question has strong 

 educational tendencies of rather a stern quality ; 

 her husband is speaking to her about a poor in- 

 valid in the parish ; she replies : " I sent him a 

 pint of port, putting a lump of camphor in it by 

 way of precaution." " Precaution, my lamb ? " 



exclaims the astonished parson. " Yes ; nobody 

 will drink port wine for pleasure that has cam- 

 phor in it. It is just beastly as a beverage, 

 though extremely wholesome ! " 



Beer contains less alcohol and less acid than 

 wine ; but it contains a variety of other sub- 

 stances, such as sugar, cellulose, dextrine, albu- 

 minous matters, etc., held in solution or suspen- 

 sion, which render it especially prone to further 

 fermentation and decomposing changes ; and 

 though the presence of these starchy, saccharine, 

 and other matters, may make it a more sustaining 

 beverage to the hard-working man, it renders it 

 quite unfit for the use of delicate stomachs, espe- 

 cially where there is any tendency to gouty mal- 

 assimilation. Beer is essentially a fermented in- 

 fusion of malt, and the addition of hops to beer 

 was an after-thought, the credit of which is given 

 to the German monks of the eleventh century. 

 Hops were added for the purpose of giving it 

 aroma and for preserving it from decomposition. 

 For many centuries this German hop-containing 

 beer was imported in large quantities into this 

 country, to the extent of 800,000 barrels a year. 1 



Before the introduction into England of tea 

 and coffee, beer was much more largely consumed 

 by the upper classes, and especially by ladies 

 than it now is, and the same remark probably 

 applies to the consumption of animal food — two 

 circumstances which may, to a certain extent, 

 account for the gouty inheritance which has been 

 handed down to so many of us. Sound beer, in 

 which the fermentation is thoroughly complete, is 

 a useful beverage in moderate quantity for healthy 

 persons who lead an active or laborious life in 

 the open air. It is useful, too, in small quantities, 

 for delicate, under-nourished children, and should 

 be taken with their meals. It will often help 

 them to grow fat more quickly than cod-liver oil. 

 It is, however, a most frequent cause of trouble- 

 some dyspepsia in persons of sedentary habits, and 

 this is especially the case with the commoner kinds, 

 which have probably not ceased to ferment, and 

 which are sold, often in an adulterated form, to the 



1 England is now the largest beer-producing and 

 beer-consuming country in the world. Its annual prod- 

 uce exceeds 880,000,000 gallons, and of this scarcely 

 two per cent, is exported. Germany produces (1872) 

 about 616,000,000 gallons, and of this it is calculated 

 that Southern Germany consumes four times as much 

 as Northern Germany. Austria produces 264,000,000. 

 North America 242,000,000. France and Belgium about 

 154,000,000 each. Paris, it is calculated, consumes only 

 from 4,400,000 to 6,600,000 gallons of beer annually, 

 compared with 66.000.000 to 88,000,000 gallons of wine. 

 —(Vide M. Radau, " La Science et la Fabrication le la 

 Biere," Revue des Deux 3/ondes, November 15, 1S76.) 



