346 



NATURE 



\March\2, 1876 



subject of wine and its adulterations ; for much on this 

 matter the author is indebted to the valuable work of 

 Thudichum and Dupr^. The question of "plastering" 

 meets with due consideration. This time-honoured opera- 

 tion (it appears to have been practised by the Greeks and 

 Romans) consists in adding finely-powdered plaster of 

 Paris, or sulphate of lime, to the must in the proportion 

 of about 40 lbs. of the plaster to a butt of must, with the 

 view of separating out the vegetable acids in the grape- 

 juice, and thereby, in the opinion of our author, substi- 

 tuting " for the healthful and beneficial tartrates, a bitter 

 and aperient salt" — sulphate of potash. The wines 

 more particularly subjected to this process are sherry, 

 port, and certain French and Greek wines. It ap- 

 peared to Dr. Hassall "that any process whereby the 

 sulphuric acid can be removed and the original tartaric 

 acid restored, and in the form in which it previously 

 existed, namely, as a tartrate of potash, is highly desir- 

 able, and would improve greatly the flavour and quality 

 of all wines which had been plastered, and increase very 

 considerably their money value." Accordingly he has 

 devised such a process in conjunction with Mr. Hehner, 

 and has obtained for it provisional protection with the 

 intent to take out a patent : it consists in treating the 

 wine with tartrate of barium, with occasional shaking, for 

 three or four days. " At the end of this time all but the 

 normal quantity of the sulphuric acid of the wine is pre- 

 cipitated as sulphate of barium, while the tartaric acid is 

 restored in exactly the same amount in which it was 

 originally present ; this, uniting with the now liberated 

 potash, gives rise once more to the formation of tartrate 

 of potash, the most characteristic saline constituent of all 

 genuine wines." This " deplastering " process may have 

 all the virtues which its authors claim for it, but since 

 barium salts are in the highest degree poisonous, we, at 

 least, should prefer that our sherry retained all its aperient 

 qualities unimpaired, rather than it should be manipulated 

 with compounds of that element. 



In reading this book the question has more than once 

 occurred to us : What must be its effect on the non-pro- 

 fessional mind — or indeed on the mind of anybody who. 

 with the view of extending his notions of the principles 

 of alimentation, takes it up for an hour or so in the 

 evening? He will find that the water he drinks 

 may be swarming with Scenedesjnus giiadrkauda, Navi- 

 cula sphcerophora, and numerous other " living orga- 

 nisms," whose names and appearance are equally dis- 

 tracting ; he is told that the tea which he adds to it may 

 be largely composed of the leaves of Chloranthus incon- 

 spicuus, or of "lie-tea," a vile compound of tea-dust, 

 foreign leaves, sand, and oxide of iron, the whole occa- 

 sionally coated with " Prussian blue, turmeric, China 

 clay, or other white mineral powder." The sugar with 

 which he sweetens the infusion may be infested with the 

 Acariis sacchari, which, he is informed, belongs " to the 

 same genus as the Acariis scabiei, or itch-insect, than 

 which, however, it is larger, and possessed of an organi- 

 sation still more formidable." The milk which he adds 

 to it may be " blue " not merely as he is content to 

 believe through the machinations of the vendor, but from 

 the presence of what the author in one place, following 

 Fuchs, calls Vibrio cyanogenens, and in another place 



Oidiuni Inctis, or Penicillium. The question whether 

 fungus or vibrio pales into insignificance before the fact 

 that milk of this kind gives rise to " gastric irritation" or 

 "severe febrile gastritis." His bread may contain P^n/- 

 cilliiim glaucum, or Oidinm orantiactim ; or it maybe 

 made from flour harbouring Uredo segetum, or Puccinia 

 graminis, or it may contain ,the poisonous darnel, the 

 symptoms produced by which, as he learns from a 

 quotation from Pereira, " are two-fold : those indicat- 

 ing gastro-intestinal irritation —such as vomiting and 

 colic ; and those which arise from disorder of the 

 cerebro-spinal system— such as headache, giddiness, lan- 

 guor, singing in the ears, confusion of sight, dilated 

 pupil, delirium, heaviness, sonmolency, trembling, con- 

 vulsions, and paralysis." After this, such common- 

 place sophistications as alum, bone-earth, and mashed 

 potatoes, can have no terrors for him. His butter, 

 as indeed we learnt from a recent case referred to in 

 Nature (vol. xiii. p. 242), may be made from other pro- 

 ducts of the cow than milk, and even his modest rasher 

 may have death lurking in its folds in the form of Cys- 

 ticercus celliilosus or Trichina spiralis, concerning which 

 he is told that the former finding its way into the intes- 

 tines, " there fixes itself by its little hooks, and quickly 

 grows, joint after joint, into a tape-worm ; " and that 

 the latter is the cause of " frightful disorder, killing 

 about 50 per cent, of its victims in terrible agony." No 

 wonder that some of us make a 'poor' breakfast; the 

 marvel is that so many of us survive the dreadful meal. 

 We can only account for the fact that numbers are known 

 to exist and even to thrive on such food on the suppo- 

 sition that, like physostigma and atropia, the horrible 

 things we eat act antagonistically and mutually obviate 

 evil consequences : a supposition which we commend to 

 the notice of Dr. Fraser ; or it may be, and with equal 

 probability, that the 'living organisms' devour each other, 

 like the Kilkenny cats, and leave no trace, not even their 

 tails, behind them. We refrain from recounting the horrors 

 which may await us at luncheon and at dinner. Even Dr. 

 Hassall is merciful ; it was with a profound sense of 

 relief and satisfaction that, turning to the end of the 

 book, we discovered, on the strength of numerous certifi- 

 cates pubhshed by him, that some articles of food are, as 

 a certain noble lady should have been, actually above 

 suspicion, although, unfortunately, many of these 

 articles rejoice in fanciful names which hardly serve 

 to recommend them to prudent matter-of-iact house- 

 wives, doubtless long ago inured to the all-preva- 

 lent adulteration. Dr. Hassall no doubt considers 

 himself a scientific man ; but there are cavillers who 

 deem it an act of questionable taste that he should 

 have appended to his book a series of advertisements 

 extending over fifty pages, the greater number of which 

 contain reports issued from his " Analytical Sanitary In- 

 stitution." We are inclined, however, to look on the 

 matter from what is doubtless Dr. Hassall's point of view, 

 that having made existence scarcely tolerable to some of 

 us by the revelations which it was his duty to make, it 

 was simply an act of kindness to indicate how we might 

 eat our daily bread (to ask for which would otherwise be 

 a mockery) in peace and comfort, even though it should 

 consist of Infants' Food and Angostura Bitters. T. 



