The ritual of temperance, and state hygiene ; contributions towards a rationale in national healthiness.

  • Pattin, H. Cooper.
Date:
[1905]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The ritual of temperance, and state hygiene ; contributions towards a rationale in national healthiness. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    to wines a distinct value as dietetic medicaments, which can be exhibited thus most agreeably. It should, however, be obvious that just as alcohol is extravagantly costly as a food, wines are extrava- gantly costly medicaments. It is so much cheaper to procure the special salt or salts, and consume these separately as drugs simply : but drinkers of wines, and they be drinkers with good judgment, buy wines to obtain the volatile ethers and essen- tial oils which are developed from the alcohol and salts contained in the vintage during the processes of its maturation. The bouquets and more or less exquisite flavours of really good wines are the final outcome of these subtle reactions. The volatile ethers so developed stimulate brain and heart, and probably add slightly to the intoxicating tendency of the alcohol with which they are associated. Everyone knows by experience that the feeling of exhilaration which is produced by the consump- tion of say half-an-ounce of alcohol in the form of two glasses of fine champagne, is much more stimulating, mentally, than the effect of an equiva- lent in alcohol in the form of whisky. It is the volatile ethers that give the sparkle to the blood as well as to the liquor. (The rationale of using old brandy for medicinal effects lies in the increas- ing amount of alcoholic ethers which develop with age). All wines, considered chemically, retard the digestive processes alike in mouth, stomach, and intestine. This retarding influence is due to the