VOL. XV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TKANSACTIONS, 129 



and sweet. He owns that there are wines, both French and Rhenish, that 

 after fermentation taste a Httle sourish or sharp, but that he says, follows fer- 

 mentation ex accidenti ratione materiae. 



M. Kunkel replies here, that he has not fairly prosecuted the work of fer- 

 mentation, which if he had done, out of all vegetables an acid might be made. 

 And that the effect of fermentation may properly be called acetum or vinegar. 



Dr. Voight proceeds; in the epistle he animadverts upon M. Kunkel's no- 

 tion, viz. That salts, by virtue of their acidity, preserve bodies from corruption. 

 This he says is against reason and experience : for salts are endowed with a 

 power sol vendi, incidendi, corrodendi, disuniendi, dividendi : the most corrosive 

 menstruums, as aquafortis, regis, &c. justify it. As also the constitution of 

 vegetables and animals, both which do soon corrupt and dissolve, on account 

 of their abounding with this saline principle. Nay salt itself cannot resist the 

 moisture of the air, being soon resolved in it. He instances yet farther, in the 

 common way of powdering or pickling fiesh, declaring against the ill quality of 

 salt, for depriving fiesh of its proper and genuine taste, bringing it to an acorem, 

 and corrupting instead of conserving it, by making it unfit for nourishment, in 

 producing diseases, &c. 



M. Kunkel, in his reply, refers to the good housewifery, common custom, 

 and universal experience, which justifies his salt, though an acid, to be a true 

 preserver of bodies from corniption : he then dislikes his conceit, that flesh 

 abounding with salt, should therefore corrupt ; but on the contrary, being 

 sweet, and wanting salt, does therefore the sooner putrify. This he proves by 

 an instance, that a whole ox has very little salt in it ; I suppose he means of 

 fixed salt ; he thinks a pickled herring, or powdered beef, very unjustly termed 

 corrupted fish and flesh. 



Dr. Voight takes up the author of the epistle, for urging an experiment, 

 which he calls against reason and experience, viz. that a pound of rotten wood 

 contains more acidum or alkali, than 5lb. of green wood : he pronounces the 

 quite contrary for truth, proceeding from one degree of putrefaction, to what 

 he calls a central corruption, or rottenness of wood, where he found that wood 

 nowise tainted, afforded the most salt, and that in every degree of greater 

 putrefaction, or the more the wood inclined to rottenness, the less salt it 

 afforded, until he came to that which was quite rotten, which afforded none 

 at all. 



M. Kunkel answers as positively in his own behalf, that he is certain of the 

 contrary, and could make it good. 



Dr. Voight complains of the author's epistle, that he confounds salia alkalia 

 et acida; for they must needs differ in their natures, which make so great an 



VOL. III. S 



