[730] “The properties of lead and arsenic are well understood; but what those of the ancient gypsums were, will require an explanation; as there seems to be just reason to believe, that some of them contained a portion of metallic or arsenical earth.”--A Candid Examination of what has been advanced on the Colic of Poitou and Devonshire, by James Hardy, London, i. 8vo, p. 84. [731] Plin. lib. xxxv. [732] Geopon. pp. 462, 483, 494. [733] Ibid. vii. 12, p. 483. [734] Ibid. p. 486. [735] Ibid. p. 486. [736] Lib. iv. tit. 3. § 13. [737] Digestor. lib. ix. tit. 2. leg. 27. § 15. Later jurists call the adulteration of wine _crimen stellionatus_. [738] De pace imperii publica. Ulmæ 1698, p. 632. [739] Goldast. Constit. Imper. tom. ii. p. 114. [740] Mémoires sur les questions proposées par l’Académie de Bruxelles en 1777. A Bruxelles 1778, 4to. [741] Traité de la Police, par De la Mare, p. 514. [“In France it does not appear that lead in any form has been employed in making or altering their wines. On the 13th of March 1824, a member of the Chamber of Deputies moved for a law to punish the practice. The motion was rejected, because neither litharge nor any other preparation of lead was shown to have been used, nor was any instance cited in which it had been detected, though an ordinance was made against its use in 1696.”--Redding’s History and Description of Wines. Lond. 1836, p. 336.] [742] “I wish those who adulterate wine were punished with greater severity; for this execrable fraud, as well as many more deceptions, has been invented in the present age; and a villany by which the colour, taste, smell and substance of wine are so changed as to resemble that of another country, has been spread not only through Germany, but also through France, Hungary and other kingdoms. It was invented, they say, by a monk named Martin Bayr, of Schwarzen-Eychen in Franconia. He undoubtedly merits eternal damnation for rendering noxious and destructive a liquor used for sacred purposes, and most agreeable to the human body; thus contaminating and debasing a gift of nature inferior to none called forth from the bosom of the earth by the influence of the solar rays; and for converting, like a sanguinary destroyer of the human race, that bestowed upon us by Nature to promote mirth and joy, and as a soother of our cares, into a poison and the cause of various distempers. But if the debasers of the current coin are punished capitally, what punishment ought to be inflicted upon the person who hath either killed or thrown into diseases all those who used wine? The former by their fraud injure a few, but the latter exposes to various dangers people of all ages, and of both sexes; occasions barrenness in women; brings on abortions and makes them miscarry; corrupts and dries up the milk of nurses; excites gouty pains in the body; causes others in the bowels and reins, than which none can be more excruciating; and produces ulcers in the intestines; in short,