VIN URANÉ PESQUI.

This medicated wine is made in Bordeaux but is sold in this country from a depôt in London. The price charged for a bottle holding 24 fluid ounces is 8s.

A small booklet, entitled Diabetes and its Cure by the Vin Urané Pesqui, was enclosed with the bottle; a few extracts from this are here given:

It has been shown by medical statistics that there are in France every year 10,000 deaths or more, due to diabetes through a deficient treatment, whilst they could have been cured by taking the Vin Urané Pesqui....

Organic sugar enters the blood together with the alimentary sugar, the former being destroyed by the molecular changes that it undergoes for the nutrition of the different organs. If not sufficiently destroyed, it is productive of glycohemia, and as it passes into the urine it brings forth glycosuria; this pathological state determines, in course of time, particularly among persons suffering from obesity, some of the following diseases: polydipsy (excessive thirst), oedema in the legs, the enfeeblement of the physical and intellectual faculties, visionary troubles, amblyopia, cataract or gutta-opaca, headaches and anaemia, followed by dryness of the skin, successive furuncles, gatherings or boils, eczemas, itching on the skin provoking an irresistible desire to scratch one self, anthrax, urinary gravel, lumbago, sciatica, albuminuria, polyuria (insipid diabetes, without sugar, excessive emission of urine), rheumatism, dropsy, bulimia (insatiable appetite) or polyphagia, azoturia (large quantity of urine with a heavy percentage of uric acid), then fearful complications; pneumonia, prurience, either vulvar or prepucial; diabetic phimosis, gangrene in different parts of the body, particularly in the toes, the nails of which become black; consumption, etc. Great mental worries are also productive of glycosuria....

Pesqui’s Urané Wine positively cures sugared diabetes, provided it is resorted to at an early stage and used during a sufficient length of time.

As soon as the patient has made use of this wine, his thirst is allayed almost instantaneously; his strength reappears; all his functions are gradually restored; his breathing, which the absence of feculents had rendered difficult, becomes easier; he is no longer put out of breath, nor does he feel any lassitude; he can now walk about without undergoing any fatigue; his look improves and his temper assumes a more pleasant character....

The Vin Urané (Uranated Wine) prepared by Mr. Pesqui, of Bordeaux, has been qualitatively analysed at the Barral chemistry laboratory. The result of this analysis points to this medicine being a compound of old Bordeaux wine, in accordance with Bouchardat’s prescriptions, to which the following elements have been added: azotate of uranium, pepsine, and other appropriate elements.

The dose was given on the label as:

Three small sherry-glassfuls per day, with or without water, 5 minutes before, or immediately after meals, and at night before bedtime.

Analysis of the wine showed it to contain, in 100 parts by measure

Alcohol8·75parts.
Glycerine3·55”
Total solids2·92”
Fixed acid, reckoned as tartaric0·43part.
Volatile acid, reckoned as acetic0·21”
Reducing sugar0·28”
Cane sugardoubtful trace.
Ash0·30part.
Uranium, equivalent to crystalline uranium nitrate0·02”

No digestive power whatever on egg-albumen could be detected, indicating the absence of unchanged pepsin. The amount of uranium found corresponds to one-twelfth of a grain of the nitrate in 1 fluid ounce, or half a grain in the daily dose, a sherry glass usually holding about 2 ounces.

The cost of the preparation depends, of course, on the cost of the original wine, and is scarcely affected by the added ingredients.