On alcohol as a medicine / by Frederic C. Coley.

  • Coley, Frederic C.
Date:
[between 1800 and 1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On alcohol as a medicine / by Frederic C. Coley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    proud of his cellar fondly trusts that it is stocked with the pure juice of the grape. But the cunning art of the manufacturer is more than a match for the connoisseur. I do not say that there is no genuine wine in the market. But wine of moderate price is nearly always spurious; and the most costly is by no means necessarily genuine. When wine is recommended medically, we can never he at all sure what the patient will take; hut we may he almost certain that it will not be the pure fermented juice of the grape. Various compounds are largely advertised alleged to be made of wine in combination with various drugs or materials recommended as possessing nutritive properties. Not long since, a patient asked my advice about the use of one of these compounds. I replied, “ Considering the difficulty of procuring genuine wine, we may practically eliminate the possibility of this preparation being made with the fermented juice of the grape. We may therefore state its composition thus—alcohol, diluted, coloured, sweetened, and otherwise flavoured: added to this, certain ingredients named in the published formula of the compound. These last-mentioned ingredients you may take separately, if it seems reasonable to suppose that they would be of any special service to you. My patient needed no arguments to prove that alcohol coloured and flavoured was no suitable remedy for her. I shall, however, be very greatly misunderstood if it is supposed that I mean to lend support to the notion that genuine wine, if it can be procured, is a safe and desirable beverage, or that it possesses the medicinal value with which it is commonly credited. On the contrary, I believe that