50 NAT, ORDER. VITACEiE. 
juice or saj) of the vine, named tachryma, has been recommended in 
calculous disorders, and is said to be an excellent application to 
weak eyes, and specks of the cornea. The unripe fruit has a 
harsh, rough, sour taste : its expressed juice, called verjuice, was 
much esteemed by the ancients, but is now superseded by the 
juice of lemons ; for external use, however, particulary in bruises 
and sprains, verjuice is still employed and considered to be a very 
useful application. 
The dried fruit constitutes an article of the Materia Medica, 
under the name of uva passa, of which two kinds were formerly 
mentioned in our pharmacopaeias ; viz., uvce passce, majoresand mi- 
nores, or raisins and currants ; the latter is a variety of the former, 
or the fruit of the vitis corinthiaca seu apyrena. The manner of 
preparing them is by immersing them in a solution of alkaline salt, 
and soap lye, made boiling hot, to which is added some olive oil 
and a small quantity of common salt, and afterwards drying them 
in the shade. These fruits are used as agreeable lubricating aces- 
cent sweets, in pectoral decoctions, and for obtunding the acrimony 
of other medicines, and rendering them grateful to the palate and 
stomach. They are directed in the Decoctnm Tiordei compositum, 
Tinctura seiince, and Tinctura cardamomi composita. 
Wine, or the fermented juice of the grape, of which there is 
a great variety, has by medical writers been principally confined to 
four sorts, as sufficient for officinal use. These are the Vinum al- 
bum Mspanicu7n, mountain ; Vinufn canarimn, canary or sack; Vi- 
nu77i rhenanum, rhenish ; and Vinum ruhrum, red port. 
Medical properties and uses. New wines, when taken into the 
stomach, are liable to a strong degree of acescency, and thereby 
occasion much flatulency, and eructation of acid matter ; heart- 
burn and violent pains of the stomach from spasms are also often 
produced ; and the acid matter, by passing into the intestines and 
mixing with the bile, is apt to occasion colics or excite diarrhoeas, 
Bweet wines are most likely to become acesent in the stomach. 
