50 NAT. ORDER. VITACEjE. 



juice or sap of the vine, named tachryina, has been recommended in 

 calculous disorders, and is said to be an excellent application to 

 weak eyes, and specks of the cornea. The unripe fruit has a 

 harsh, rough, sour taste : its expressed juice, called veijuice, was 

 much esteemed by the ancients, but is now superseded by the 

 juice of lemons ; for external use, however, particulary in bruises 

 and sprains, verjuice is still employed and considered to be a very 

 useful ajiplication. 



The dried fruit constitutes an article of the Materia Medica, 

 under the name of vva 2)assa, of which two kinds were formerly 

 mentioned in our pharmacopaeias ; viz., uvce passcp, majoresand mi- 

 nores, or raisins and cui-rants ; the latter is a variety of the former, 

 or the fruit of the vitis corinthiaca seu apyrena. The manner f)f 

 preparing them is by immersing them in a solution of alkaline salt, 

 and soap 136, made boiling hot, to which is added some olive oil 

 and a small quantity of common salt, and afterwards drying them 

 in the shade. These fruits are used as agreeable lubricating aces- 

 cent sweets, in pectoral decoctions, and for obtunding the acrimony 

 of other medicines, and rendering them grateful to the palate and 

 stomach. They are directed in the Decoct um hordei compositum, 

 Tinctura sennce, and Tinctura cardamomi composita. 



Wine, or the fermented juice of the grape, of which there is 

 a great variety, has by medical writers been principally confined to 

 four sorts, as sufficient for officinal use. These are the Vinum al- 

 bum Mspanicum., mountain ; Vinum canarium, canary or sack; Yi- 

 num rhenanum, rhenish ; and Vinum ruhrum, red port. 



Medical properties and uses. New wines, when taken into the 

 stomach, are liable to a strong degree of acescency, and thereby 

 occasion much flatulency, and eructation of acid matter ; heart- 

 burn and violent pains of the stomach from spasms are also often 

 produced ; and the acid matter, by passing into the intestines and 

 mixing with the bile, is apt to occasion colics or excite diarrhoeas. 

 Sweet wines are most likely to become acesent in the stomach. 



