A treatise on the art of making wine from native fruits. Exhibiting the chemical principles upon which the art of wine making depends; the fruits best adapted for home made wines, and the method of preparing them / By Frederick Accum.

  • Accum, Friedrich Christian, 1769-1838.
Date:
1820
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the art of making wine from native fruits. Exhibiting the chemical principles upon which the art of wine making depends; the fruits best adapted for home made wines, and the method of preparing them / By Frederick Accum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    “ Come, Christopher, and leave all meaner things, To low ambition and the pride of kings; Let us, since life can little else supply ; Than just to swallow poison and to die; Expatiate free o’er all this dreadful el Try what the brewer, what the baker yield ; d Explore the druggists shop, the but- chers’ stall ; Expose their roguery, and—damn them all!” Pops. Melancholy as the details are, there is something almost ludi- crous, we think, in the very extent to which the deceptions are carried. So inextricably are we all immersed in this mighty labyrinth of fraud, that even the venders of poison themselves are forced, by a sort of retributive justice, to swallow it in their turn.— Thus the apothecary, who sells the brewer, chuckles over his roguery, and swallows his own drugs in his daily copious ex- hibitions of Brown stout. The brewer in his turn, is poisoned by the baker, the wine-mer- chant, and the grocer. And, whenever the baker’s stomach de grace in the adulterated drugs of his friend the apothe- cary, whose health he has been gradually contributing to un- dermine, by feeding him every morning on chalk:and alum, in the shape of hot rolls. Our readers will now, we think, be able to form a general idea of the perils to which they are exposed by every meal, . Mr. Accum’s details'on the adulteration of wine are ex- tremely ample, and so interest- ing, that we regret our limits prevent our making more copi- ous extracts, and oblige us to refer our readers for farther in- formation to the work itself. Having thus laid open to our view the arcana of the cellar, Mr. Accum next treats us with brew-house. Verily, the wine- merchant and brewer are par nobile fratrum ; and after the following disclosures, it will henceforth be a matter of the greatest indifference to us, whe- ther we drink Perry or Cham- paigne, Hermitage or Brown stout. Latet anguisin poculo, there is disease and death in them ail, and one is only pre- ferable to the other, because it will poison us at about one- tenth of the expense. “* Malt liquors, and_ particularly orter, the favourite beverage of the inhabitants of London and of other large towns, is amongst those articles, in the manufacture of which the great- est frauds are frequently committéd. ° “¢ The practice of adulterating beer appears to be of early date. To shew, that they have augmented in our own © documents laid lately before Parlia- ment. “‘ Mr. Accum not only amply proves that unwholesome ingredients are use by fraudulent brewers, and that very deleterious substances are also vended both to brewers and publicans for adulterating beer, but that the ingre- dients mixed up in the brewer’s en- chanting cauldron are placed above all competition, even with the potent charms of Macbeth’s witches ;