352 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
For consumptive persons the ripe, luscious, sweet grapes, 
besides affording an exceptionally large quantity of warming, 
fattening glucose (7.e. grape sugar), specifically stimulate the lung 
substance to healthier action, and help it to throw off effete 
matters by thus encouraging the formation of new tissue. During 
the grape cure the fruit if taken on an empty stomach would act 
as a laxative: so that eating them does not begin until after 
breakfast. A hundred pounds weight of ripe, sweet grapes 
include within their pulp as much as thirteen pounds, full weight, 
of the purest glucose ; and because of this abundance the said 
glucose has received, wherever obtained, the comprehensive 
name of grape sugar. Furthermore, the tartaric acid which 
sweet grapes contain plentifully is the basis of several so-called 
* blood-purifying ” medicines. Neuralgia and the sleeplessness 
of debility may be materially improved by the sweet grape cure, 
because nutrition is thereby stimulated, and the needful quality 
of good blood restored. 
“Some of the credit,” says Dr. Hutchison. “of the results 
attained must be put down to the circumstances under which 
the grape cure is carried out ; seeing that the patient is expected 
to gather the grapes for himself, the doing which entails a certain 
amount of exercise in the open fresh air. Consumptive patients 
are sent to the Gironde for the purpose of breathing-in the vapour 
from the wine vats whilst the grape juice is fermenting, this 
proving to be highly beneficial as a restorative for weakly and 
delicate young persons. The wine-vapour in this district is 
more stimulating, and more curative than in Burgundy. Young 
girls who suffer from atrophy are at first made to remain for some 
hours daily in the sheds whilst the wine-pressing is going forward. 
After a time, as they become less weak, they are directed to jump 
into the wine press, where they skip about and inhale the fumes 
of the fermenting juice, until they sometimes become intoxi- 
cated thereby, and even senseless. But this effect subsides after 
two or three trials, and presently the girls return to their homes, 
and work, with renewed strength and heightened colour, hopeful, 
joyous, and robust.”’ A stranger on his first visit to the Bodegas. 
or wine vaults of Southern Spain experiences a decided sense of 
exhilaration, with quickening of the pulse, this being followed 
presently by a narcotic effect, with a feeling of languor and 
headache. According to an authoritative examination (Lancet) 
made of the distillery air it appeared that no less than an ounce 
