All wines contain more or less acid; for British wines are considered less salubrious than those of foreign, from their having an excess of malic acid, which our fruits contain.  The foreign wines are reckoned superior in quality, in consequence of their containing an excess of tartaric acid, their fruit containing a greater portion of this acid than does ours.  Wines during fermentation, if improperly managed, will produce acetic acid, which will greatly deteriorate their quality.

Various have been the opinions of eminent men on the effects of wine upon the constitution.  It would be needless to enter into a detailed account of all those who have written for or against its utility; the following, from a modern eminent writer against the use of wines will suffice, and serve to show that the opponents to wine-drinking have at least some reason on their side.  Mr. Beddoes, states, in his “Hygeia,” vol. ii, p. 35, that an ingenious surgeon tried the following experiment:—­He gave two of his children for a week alternately after dinner, to the one a full glass of sherry, and to the other a large China orange; the effects that followed were sufficient to prove the injurious tendency of vinous liquors.  In the one the pulse was quickened, the heat increased; whilst the other had every appearance that indicated high health; the same effect followed when the experiment was reversed.  This certainly is a formidable objection, but let us before drawing a final conclusion, examine the opposite arguments.

Wines, and, indeed, all fermented liquors have an antiseptic quality.  They act in direct opposition to putrefaction, and in proportion to the quantity of alcohol which they contain, so will be their value and beneficial tendency.  Now the circulating fluids of our system have a continual tendency to putrefaction; and the food we take, both animal and vegetable, tends to produce this effect; if, therefore, something of an antiseptic nature, or of a nature in direct opposition to this principle be not received, the fluids would ultimately become a mass of corruption, with the extinction of life.  If we meet with an individual whose habits are abstemious, as regards the drinking of wines or fermented liquors, we generally discover him to have a great predilection for that valuable commodity salt, which article being in its nature antiseptic, answers the same purpose as wine.  Therefore, the labouring man, whose narrow circumstances prohibit him from the advantage of a daily use of wine, by taking with his food a sufficient quantity of salt, and his apportioned quantity of malt liquor, retains his vigour and strength of body equally with those whose more ample means render them capable of acquiring the necessary quantity of wine daily.  Doctor Barry mentions an experiment made on a soldier, who was hired to live entirely for some days on wild fowl,[3] with water only to drink; he received in the beginning his reward and diet with