The tricks of the trade in the adulterations of food and physic : with directions for their detection and counteraction.

Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The tricks of the trade in the adulterations of food and physic : with directions for their detection and counteraction. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    tendency to turn sour. Dr. Watson asserts that this practice is largely followed in Paris; andDi. alien gives an instance where thirty persons, who partook of such wine, were all seized with pams in the stomach, ^There is a treatise on wine-making, hy air. Graham, where, under the head of “secrets,” he says, to hinder wine from turning sour, put a pound oi melted lead, in fair water, into your cask, pretty warm, and stop it close.” Another receipt for softening grey wine is to put vinegar into the cask—“ vinegar w here- in litharge has keen well steeped.” Wine adulterated with lead is easily detected, by- throwing sulphate of potash, or liver of sulphur, as it is called, into it, when a black precipitate takes place. y Professor Taylor says that the presence of lead m wine may be accounted for by the lead shot whmh are used for the purpose of cleaning the bottles, being frequently left in them. He has found when the slmt are in much larger proportion than could ever he left by accident in a ivine bottle that good wine, whe- ther port or sherry, becomes only very slowly nnpre - nated with lead. After two or three months a white sediment was formed, but no lead was dissoh ed. Atte thirteen months the port wine retained its colour, and scarcely any portion of lead was dissolved by it. lde sherry nadlecome darker in colour and the presence of Sd was very evident in it. After a lapse of sis years the port wine had a dull reel colour, tested cave only faint traces of lead; but the siieriy had acquired a very pale straw colour, and was pietty sHoncrimpregnated with lead. Very acid wines dissolve the lead more rapidly, and m a quantity suf- ficient to produce colic, or other serious symptoms. A loin'-use of such wines, although each bottle may but a very small portion of lead, is extremely dangerons, and certain to lead to serious consequence^ If even the repeated application of a hair dye, hie consisted of ead and lime, caused, as mentione y