A history and description of modern wines / by Cyrus Redding.

  • Redding, Cyrus, 1785-1870.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A history and description of modern wines / by Cyrus Redding. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    crates, when he speaks of wine and its use in different degrees of strength, he can scarcely guess why, might be treating of a remedy for fever, at this moment used in several parts of Greece. This is a much better way of accounting for what seems “ obscure,” in the rules of the Greek physician, than any light Barry has thrown upon the subject. Old thick wine is still a remedy in Cyprus for tertian and quartan agues, common in that and some other of the Greek islands, where the old wine used to burn like oil. Dr. Henderson does not seem to be aware of this circumstance, when he corrects Barry, and supposes the drink was used merely as a diluent, for even in that character, in common fevers, wine would seem oddly applied, unless the patient were in a state of con- valescence ; I say this with due submission to better Esculapian knowledge. Barry’s first chapter treats of the nature and principles of wine, and gives Boerhaave’s idea of fermentation, a subject now better understood: water, fire, terrestrial, saline, and oily parts, with ardent spirit, Barry de- scribes as the component parts of wine. In the second chapter, he enters upon “ the wines of the ancients,” and introduces Galen and the Italian wines ; Dioscorides, Pliny, and Athseneus, are quoted. “ Inspissated” wines are touched upon; Cato, Columella, and Bacci, are in- troduced. Dr. Barry then considers the mode adopted by the ancients in making and preserving their wines; and makes the notable discovery that they were either weak, strong, or intermediate. He laments that modern wine-coopers know nothing of fining with isinglass, eggs.