VITIS VINIFERA. 
239 
used as agreeable lubricating ascescent sweets in pectoral decoctions, 
and for obtunding the acrimony of other medicines, and rendering 
them more grateful to the palate and stomach. They are more laxative 
than the fresh fruit, and are apt to prove flatulent when eaten in any 
quantity. Ripe grapes are cooling and antiseptic ; and if taken in 
large quantities, laxative and diuretic. They are very useful in all 
cases of fever, allaying thirst and febrile heat ; in bilious and putrid 
fevers, some cases of dysentery, and all inflammatory affections, 
their use is particularly indicated. In phthisis pulraonalis grapes 
have been strongly recommended, as an article of diet, for which, 
from the quantity of bland nutritious matter they contain, they 
seem well adapted ; and some cases have come under our ob- 
servation, where persons have recovered from an apparently very 
hopeless state of consumption, where grapes were the only me- 
dicament, and almost the only diet allowed. In Syria, the in- 
spissated juice of ripe grapes is used in large quantities, in several 
febrile and inflammatory diseases. But it is in the form of wine 
that grapes are more particularly entitled to our attention, and we 
must therefore dilate somewhat on this part of our subject. 
Manufacture of Wine. Wine it is well known, is the fer- 
mented juice of the grape; and the most striking peculiarity con- 
nected with it is, that from this one fruit, wines should be produced 
differing so much in flavour, taste, smell, and other essential charac- 
teristics. This difference depends upon many circumstances : the 
quality of the fruit itself, climate, soil, and the method used in con- 
ducting the fermentation. The most usual mode of making wine is, 
to gather the grapes when fully ripe, when they are immediately 
subjected to the press, by which the juice is separated from the 
seeds and skins : in some places the grapes are picked from the 
stalks before they are pressed ; this is the case at Madeira, where 
every kind of grape which the island produces, except the Malmsey 
and the Sercial, are pressed together to make that excellent wine. 
In other places, and indeed more generally, the grapes are pressed 
with the stalks, just as they come from the vine. The wine of Chio, 
so much esteemed by the ancients for its exquisite flavour and 
strength, is made from nearly dried grapes, as are some other wines. 
The expressed juice, called must, is placed in vats, and subjected to 
a temperature of 70°, when the process of vinous fermentation com- 
mences; the liquor becomes turbid, an intestine motion may be 
observed, its temperature is increased, a scum collects on its surface, 
and carbonic acid gas is disengaged. After some days this activity 
gradually subsides, the scum and other impurities fall to the bottom, 
the liquor clears, having lost its saccharine taste, and is now become 
