Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/426

 *times they hardly act on it at all. The difference probably depends on differences in the composition of the glaze. Gmelin says, that if there is little oxide of lead present, acids and fat do not corrode it; but that potters often use too much, to render the glaze more fusible; and that then it is easily corroded. Westrumb states, that, if the lead glaze is thoroughly vitrified and not cracked, the strongest acids do not attack it. Farther experiments are still required to elucidate this subject.

It is not, however, by accident only that the food or drink of man is subject to be poisoned with lead. Many articles are adulterated with it designedly for a variety of purposes. These adulterations it is necessary for the medical jurist to study.

No kind of adulteration with lead is more common than that of wine; which, when too acid and harsh from the first, or rendered acescent by decay, may be materially improved in taste by the addition of litharge.

The practice of correcting unsound wines in this way seems to have been well known at an early period. Betwixt the years 1498 and 1577, various decrees were passed against it by the German emperors; and in some provinces the crime was even punished capitally. For some time afterwards the dangerous effects of the practice appear to have been lost sight of in Germany. But towards the close of the seventeenth century, the attention of physicians and legislators in that country was pointedly directed to the subject by various writers in the Acta Germanica. The same practice has been long prevalent in France. The famous endemic colic of Poitou, which appeared in 1572, and raged for sixty or seventy years, has been with justice ascribed in modern times to the adulteration of wine with lead, and has given to the lead colic its scientific name of colica pictonum. More recently, the practice became exceedingly prevalent in Paris. About the year 1750, the farmers-general found that for some years before that, 30,000 hogsheads of sour wine were annually brought into Paris for the alleged purpose of making vinegar, while the previous yearly imports did not exceed 1200. An inquiry was accordingly set on foot; which led to the discovery, that the vinegar merchants corrected the sour wines with litharge, and thus made them marketable. Notwithstanding the active system of medical police in the French capital, the crime is not yet eradicated. Indeed the small tart wines used so abundantly there by all ranks, hold out great encouragement and facilities to its perpetration.

The process employed for correcting the acescency of wine is not precisely known. Some wines are easily corrected; Mérat found that a bottle of harsh wine, which had a sharp, bitterish, rather acrid