With respect to the high prices realized by old wines of lamous vintages, we may state that as much as £2 per bottle has occasionally been given for port and Tokay; and on one occasion a few years ago, two bottles of old Burgundy were sold at the very extraordinary price of £80 each.
Dietetic and Medical Value of Wines.—It may be laid down as a general rule that the of wine, even in moderate quantity, is not necessary for young or adult persons enjoying good ordinary health, breathing fresh country air, and not exposed to over work or any other abnormal depressing agency. As, however, life advances and the circulation becomes languid, wine in moderation becomes an essential, or at all events a valuable article of food; and even in earlier life the physician meets large numbers of townspeople, especially women engaged in sedentary occupations, who cannot digest the national drink, beer, which is admirably suited to our out-door and to persons of higher rank who indulge freely in open-air exercises. In such cases the beer is replaced by the more grateful beverage tea, which, however, when taken too freely, and without sufficient solid food, gives rise to a form of distressing dyspepsia, which too often impels the sufferer to seek refuge in spirits. In many such cases cheap wine, which may be purchased under our new tariff at from ls. 6d. to 2s. a bottle, mixed, with an equal bulk of water, will be found an excellent substitute for the beer or tea.. We shall first notice the medical uses of those numerous cheap French, German, and Italian wines which have been during the last few years so prominently brought before the attention of the British public by certain wine merchants; and then briefly notice the uses of the more expensive wines, such as port, sherry, champagne, etc. In the first department of the subject we shall take Dr. Druitt's Report on Cheap Wines as our chief authority, and we shall regard as cheap wines those whose price does not exceed 2s. 6d. a bottle. In prescribing wine, whether cheap or dear, the physician desires to give not merely alcohol, for that might be given far more cheaply under the form of gin or British brandy, but a compound liquid containing not only more salts or mineral ingredients than many a mineral water, but also th 'xtractive parts of grape juice, and the powerful oils and ethers which give to win' special flavor or bouquet and its singular exhilarating properties. "The distinctive elements of wine," says Dr. Druitt, " are to be had in abundance in cheap Bordeaux, Burgundy, and other French wines; in Rhine wine; in, the Hungarian, Austrian, and some Greek wine; and in all with a natural and not injurious quantity of spirit. In prescribing pure wine—i.e., light natural, virgin wine—the practitioner has a new article of both diet and medicine in his hands."—Op. cit., p. 22. In cases of debility and indigestion, such wine as that which we are now considering, diluted with cold water, may often be freely prescribed with great advantage in place of tea at breakfast, as well as at luncheon or dinner, or dinner and supper, according as the patient arranges his meals. The best of the cheap wines are those of Bordeaux: they are pure, light, and exhilarating; moder ately strong, seldom containing 20 per cent of alcohol; free from sugar and other mate rials likely to induce gout or headache; and are admirably adapted, according to Dr.
Druitt (who has experimented largely upon them), for children with capricious and bad appetites, for literary persons, and for all whose occupations are chiefly carried on indoors, and which tax the brain more than the muscle. They should he taken at, not after, meals; and in many cases, when judiciously prescribed, they will be of more service to patients suffering from anaemia, chlorosis, dyspepsia, or gouty or rheumatic tendencies, than any form of medicine. The Bordeaux wines are, moreover, of great use in relieving the restleumess, nightly wandering, and thirst that accompany scarlet fever and measles in children ; one part of wine with one or two of cold water, accord ing to age, being an excellent drink, acting at once as a diaphoretic, saline, and sedative. The Burgundy wines are fuller, stouter (on an average from 2 to 4 per cent stronger in alcohol), and higher flavored than the Bordeaux of equal price. The cheap Burgundies are inferior to the Bordeaux as medicinal agents; but the higher-priced wines (at and above 4.s. a bottle) are of extreme service in cases of debility with nervous exhaustion, and, as Dr. Druitt remarks, "what Bordeaux is to the blood, that is Bur randy to the nerves." Some of the Hungarian wines which are being now introduced into England are excellent substitutes for Bordeaux; and not having the acidity, austerity; and cold ness of the latter, are often preferred by patients. the most important of the dearer kinds of wine are port, sherry, and champagne. Good old port is a tonic of great value in cases of fever and other forms of extreme debility ; but many persons past 40 dare not take it if they have any predisposition to gout. Port wine given with warm water, administered with a biscuit at bedtime, often induces a good night's rest during convalescence from fevers or other weakening diseases. But. during the last 30 or 40 years its price has risen from 30 to 100 per cent; and the port purchased at a vintner's by a poor invalid at 4s. a bottle is usually nothing but doctored British spirit that has been sent to Hamburg to he transmuted into wine. In place of good port, now unat tainable by the poor, the physician had better prescribe good British brandy if a strong stimulant be required, or such wines as the Hungarian Ofner or French Madeira if it is the nutritive value of wine that is required. Sherry is, in a dietetic point of view, the wine in most general use in England, and if pure it agrees well with most constitutions. It is the only wine admitted into the pharmacopoeia, in which it is employed in the com position of aloetic, antimqnial, colchicum, and other medicated wines. It is a wine that suits the stomach in many cases of dyspepsia, but it is not often prescribed medicinally. Champagne is a wine that acts as a most valuable medicine in cases of vomiting, irritable stomach, etc., and when the appetite flags and there is great general debility. Genuine Tokay is so rare a wine that it is almost unnecessary to notice it; it is, however, when procurable extremely valuable as a cordial for aged persons of broken-down constitu tion. See AMERICAN WINES, FRENCH WINES, GERMAN WINES, GREEK WINES, ITALIAN WINES, PORTUGUESE WINES, SPANISH WINES.