The Brookhaven leader., 1888-11-22
MORE ADULTERATIONS.
A Few Suggestive Points for Beer an
Wine Drinkers.

A Few Suggestive Points for Beer and
Wine Drinkers.
If French beer and wine drinkers
are not themselves in q fret at the
present moment; the authorities are so
in their behalf. 1t is not that the
functionaries have been sliced with
moral spasms, but that the stomachs
of the dear people are in peril. The
enemy is a fresh kind of depraved
beer, and the special deprayity of it is
salicylic acid This product is added
to beer, in the proportion OF half a
grain per quart, to preserve it. Now
salicylic acid, even in this feeble dose,
has direct and injurious effect upon
the kidneys and liver, and is therefore
especially pernicious to elderly per-
sons, rs it accumulates physical and
distressing symptoms. Young and ro-
bust persons may swallow it with
certain impunity for time, but in the
end it must inevitably prove danger
Gus, The product first came into en-
plOy as an antiseptic and in the treat
ment of rheumatism. So far so well,
but in 1874 the merchants began using
it to preserve wine, and now it is ex-
tensiyely employed in beer by French
and German brewers, and probably by
those of other countries. The French
police have begun war upon this danger
Gus adulteration by several seizures, and
official study is now directed to
schemes for abating these doctored
wines, both the homo and imported
product.
Here is a similar story which is told
of French wine, CLEANED from the pro-
ceedings of recent meeting at the
Academy of Medicine. Ethylic acid
has long been used in French wines.
Paris Is full of the adulterated stuff,
and it requires a chemical nose TO de-
tect it. To.this has been added amy
lie acid. Great quantities of inferior
Italian and Spanish wines are brought
into France, and to give them body
and havor amylic alcohol is added.
These tinkered wines are shipped in
great quantities to this country, and
their use is extensive in France. Since
the era of the phylloXera and the rise
in value of good wine, the use of a.
coholie drinks has largely increased in
France, as in other parts of the con-
tinent, and the taste for strength
ened" wine has grown also. Since
1880 the number of grog-shops has
mounted up wonderfully in Paris. The
number now is 1000, or about one to
twenty-five persons. The same thing
is true in other parts of France, es-
pecially, perhaps, in wine-growing
regions, where the failure of crops
and increased prices of wine
have driven the laborers to strong
drink. These facts are so notorious,
and the tendency to alcoholic in
diligence is seen to be SO dangerous,
that the Academy of Medicine has
taken up the subject seriously at the
request of the French Senate. Its con-
illusions are that the addition OF alco-
hol to wine should be forbidden; and
that ell alcoholized wines should be
shut out of the country; that wines
containing over twelve degrees of al
cohol-the present legal limit being
fifteen-should be prohibited; that tbs
number of cabarets should be dimin-
ished, and that they should be thor
oughly and frequently inspected.
These facts have their value as
items in the history of food supplies in
France. But they also possess a
special interest to American drinkers
of beer and French wines. These fluids
have been reckoned as comparatively
innocuous, but science and commercial
greed have relegated them TO the long
list OF slow poisons. To the majority
of people alcohol is itself poison, not
to mention it, dangers 30 morality.
and now BY civilized progress. its
capacity for harm is dangerously in
creased. CSristfga a RQrk