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Professor Beck's Researches on Wines, fyc. 



intimately combined with the water, and thus to a certain ex- 

 tent loses its power of intoxication. The union of alcohol and 

 water is not complete until they have been for some time in con- 

 tact ; and hence, when brandy and water are taken into the sto- 

 mach immediately after their mixture, the effect on the system 

 is not very different from that produced by the same proportion 

 of brandy taken separately. 



Mr Brande, in one of his papers, assures us that, when brandy 

 and water are mixed and allowed to remain in combination for 

 some time, the intoxicating power is not greater than that of 

 wine containing an equivalent of brandy. In wines, the union 

 of the alcohol and water becomes complete by the process of at- 

 tenuation, and it is, in my opinion, to this more than to the con- 

 trolling effects of the other vegetable matters that we are to as- 

 cribe their less decided intoxicating powers ; and, on the con- 

 trary, it is to the imperfect union that the ordinary mixtures of 

 brandy and water owe their more energetic action on the system. 

 I should also observe, that mistakes concerning the relative in- 

 toxicating powers of mixtures of alcohol and water, and of wines, 

 may have arisen from the different modes in which they are 

 ordinarily drank. A half pint glass of brandy and water, of 

 common strength, contains an amount of alcohol but little less 

 than the same measure of ordinary Madeira. And, if these por- 

 tions of wine and of brandy and water should be drunk in the 

 same manner, the effects on the animal economy would not be 

 so different as is generally supposed. Wine is usually taken in 

 small quantities and at intervals, — circumstances which must 

 have a great effect in modifying its action on the system, and to 

 these may also be added the fact, that its habitual use impairs 

 the susceptibility of the system to its intoxicating power. 



On the whole, there is reason to conclude that the difference 

 in the intoxicating power of wine and that of the ordinary mix- 

 tures of water with the same proportion of alcohol, if it exists at 

 all, is owing more to the intimate combination of the alcohol 

 with the water in the former, than to any peculiar effect of the 

 other vegetable matters contained in it. But, from the consi- 

 derations above stated, I am inclined to believe, that, after all, 

 the difference is rather apparent than real. — Amer. Jour. Science 

 and Arts, vol. xxviii. p. 42. 



