This practice,
which is generally pursued by wine-merchants, may give rise to serious
consequences, as will become evident from the following case:[38]

"A gentleman who had never in his life experienced a day's illness, and
who was constantly in the habit of drinking half a bottle of Madeira
wine after his dinner, was taken ill, three hours after dinner, with a
severe pain in the stomach and violent bowel colic, which gradually
yielded within twelve hours to the remedies prescribed by his medical
adviser. The day following he drank the remainder of the same bottle of
wine which was left the preceding day, and within two hours afterwards
he was again seized with the most violent colliquative pains, headach,
shiverings, and great pain over the whole body. His apothecary becoming
suspicious that the wine he had drank might be the cause of the
disease, ordered the bottle from which the wine had been decanted to be
brought to him, with a view that he might examine the dregs, if any were
left. The bottle happening to slip out of the hand of the servant,
disclosed a row of shot wedged forcibly into the angular bent-up
circumference of it. On examining the beads of shot, they crumbled into
dust, the outer crust (defended by a coat of black lead with which the
shot is glazed) being alone left unacted on, whilst the remainder of the
metal was dissolved. The wine, therefore, had become contaminated with
_lead and arsenic_, the shot being a compound of these metals, which no
doubt had produced the mischief."

TEST FOR DETECTING THE DELETERIOUS ADULTERATIONS OF WINE.

A ready re-agent for detecting the presence of lead, or any other
deleterious metal in wine, is known by the name of the _wine test_. It
consists of water saturated with sulphuretted hydrogen gas, acidulated
with muriatic acid. By adding one part of it, to two of wine, or any
other liquid suspected to contain lead, a dark coloured or black
precipitate will fall down, which does not disappear by an addition of
muriatic acid; and this precipitate, dried and fused before the blowpipe
on a piece of charcoal, yields a globule of metallic lead. This test
does not precipitate iron; the muriatic acid retains iron in solution
when combined with sulphuretted hydrogen; and any acid in the wine has
no effect in precipitating any of the sulphur of the test liquor. Or a
still more efficacious method is, to pass a current of sulphuretted
hydrogen gas through the wine, in the man