This whey is made by boiling half a pint of the scorbutic juices in a quart of cow’s milk. More benefit, however, is to be expected from eating the plants, than from their expressed juices.
The scorbutic plants are, bitter oranges, brooklime, garden scurvy-grass, and water-cresses.
A number of other wheys may be prepared nearly in the same manner, as orange whey, cream of tartar whey, &c. These are cooling pleasant drinks in fevers, and may be rendered cordial, when necessary, by the addition of wine.
WINES.
The effects of wine are, to raise the pulse, promote perspiration, warm the habit, and exhilarate the spirits. The red wines, besides these effects, have an astringent quality, by which they strengthen the tone of the stomach and intestines, and by this means prove serviceable in restraining immoderate secretions.
The thin sharp wines have a different tendency. They pass off freely by the different emunctories, and gently open the body. The effects of the full bodied wines are, however, much more durable than those of the thinner.
All sweet wines contain a glutinous substance, and do not pass off freely. Hence they will heat the body more than an equal quantity of any other wine, though it should contain fully as much spirit.
From the obvious qualities of wine, it must appear to be an excellent cordial medicine. Indeed, to say the truth, it is worth all the rest put together.
But to answer this character, it must be sound and good. No benefit is to be expected from the common trash that is often sold by the name of wine, without possessing one drop of the juice of the grape. Perhaps no medicine is more rarely obtained genuine than wine.
Wine is not only used as a medicine, but is also employed as a menstruum for extracting the virtues of other medicinal substances; for which it is not ill adapted, being a compound of water, inflammable spirit, and acid; by which means it is enabled to act upon vegetable and animal substances, and also to dissolve some bodies of the metallic kind, so as to impregnate itself with their virtues, as steel, antimony, &c.