518 BritijJi Poisons : QNov. 



their option to use any wholesome ingredients, which they may think 

 proper, such as sugar and molasses, in the manufacture of beer, the 

 only other alternative for people, who wish to have a strong and 

 wholesome fermented liquor, at half the usual price, appears to be, to 

 become their own brewers — a matter of easy accomplishment, and one, 

 in the recommendation of which, the benevolent have it in their power 

 to essentially benefit their poorer neighbours, especially by assisting 

 and pointing out to them the simplicity of the process. 



Before we proceed to shew how easily this may be accomplished, we 

 may be permitted to notice another of the British poisons : namely, the 

 coarse grain spirit, which is manufactured here, but more especially in 

 Scotland, to be afterwards converted into English gin. This stuff, be it 

 observed, is not so carefully manufactured, nor made with the same 

 proportion of real malt, as that which is used in Scotland and Ireland, 

 under the name of whiskey. It is, in fact, produced not from malt, but 

 from inferior barley, oats, and other coarse raw grains ; and the object of 

 the distiller being to obtain as great a 9?/rtH/i7j/' of spirit as possible, quality 

 is less an object ; because any bad flavour, denoting an excess of dele- 

 terious ingredients, is afterwards " doctored" or disguised, in transmuting 

 the spirit into gin. Dr. Ure, in the course of a very particular and close 

 examination, by the Molasses Committee, in regard to the comparative 

 values of grain, and sugar or molasses, when used in the distillery and 

 breweries, and of the respective wholesomeness of their products, was 

 asked, " What are the noxious properties developed, during the fer- 

 mentation of grain ?" he replied, " There is a peculiar essential oil, 

 separated, during the fermentation of grain, especially if the grain is 

 unsound, and which in cold weather assumes a concrete form, like 

 tallow." " Is that the fatty substance first noticed by the chemist Scheele ?" 

 " I do not remember, but I have collected it myself in large quantities 

 in raw grain distilleries ; it has puzzled me somewhat to explain its pro- 

 duction, but I believe it is partly generated in the process of fermenta- 

 tion, and partly resides in the grain. This oil comes over in such 

 quantities at times as to float upon the low wines. * * * In moderate 

 quantities; it gives spirits a milky hue, or at least the milkiness is de- 

 veloped on dilution with water. I consider that principle remarkably 

 unwholesome ; it is evidently nauseous to the smell. I believe that tlie 

 purer saccharine matter of sugar and molasses would produce none of 

 that crude essential oil." 



" When you state that you conceive this tallowy oil in grain spirit 

 to be noxious, what effects, as far as you are able to judge, do you con- 

 ceive ai-e produced bj the presence of too much of that oil .''" " I have 

 known persons who have taken spirit highly impregnated with that, to 

 be instantly affected as by the presence of a narcotic poison. / have 

 hiown a person killed by it : the person had taken a quantity of very bad 

 spirit, which had precisely the odour of this detestable oil." — This per- 

 son be it observed, had taken " no great quantity.'' 



Dr. Ure further states, that he had not been able to detect this noxious 

 oil in genuine rum ; and that malt whiskey, an article which seldom 

 comes from Scotland to the London mai-ket, where it is sold at seventeen 

 to twenty shillings the gallon, is superior to the raw grain spirit, in 

 being freer from that oil. It seems to abound most in imperfect or bad 

 grain, and is found in rectified spirits, as well as in low wines. To con- 

 ceal this poison, the Doctor says he has known respectable distillers 



