The wines and beverages of old corresponded to many of the dishes themselves; which of these was most productive of indigestion it were difficult to state. Hippocras, so generously indulged in, not to mention posset, mead, metheglin, and perry, must have been a potent factor in fomenting the uric-acid diathesis. When to these common beverages are added the fiery, heavy, sweet, and mixed wines that were in general use, it is scarcely surprising that the seeds of gout were sown broadcast, and that the indiscretions of the fathers were visited upon the children unto the existing generation. Even Milton did not escape, while Spenser, Sir William Temple, and a host of worthies who were supposed to be abstemious in their diet were victims to arthritic complaints. How Shakespeare eluded the malady seems a miracle, in view of the existing viands and beverages and the necessary lack of exercise attendant on his literary pursuits. Alexander Neckham, in his twelfth-century treatise, mentions claré and nectar as proper to be found in the cellar or in the storehouse. Claré was a mixture of clear red wine, the best of which came from Guyenne, with honey, sugar, and spices, as distinguished from piment or nectar, a similar compound, but with more substance, founded on the red wine of Burgundy, Dauphiné, etc. In ancient days the taste was for "strong, sharp, and full-flavoured" wines. Bordeaux, or "claret," as it is now made was unknown. Vitification and vinification were then undeveloped compared with the present time. In place of the existing delicate growths of the Médoc were the fiery wines of Guyenne and Gascony and the heavy products of Provence and Languedoc. It is to be supposed, likewise, that the Rhenish wines at that time were totally different from those of the Rheingau and the Bavarian Palatinate now. But the kinds mostly in vogue were sack and malmsey, muscadel and canary, and "bastard" or malaga, port as yet not having been introduced into England. The punch-bowl or wassail-bowl, the goddard, caudle-cup and posset-pot, were all in use in England in olden days--punch, or "pauch," however, being a drink of Indian origin, the word meaning five, and so named from its five ingredients: arrack, tea, sugar, lemon-juice, and water. Grog is an English beverage of later introduction. Admiral Vernon, in 1745, having put an end to the use by the English navy of ale, substituted for it rum diluted with water. The admiral was dubbed by the sailors "Old Grog," because of an old cloak of grogram which he always wore in foul weather, and hence it came naturally about that the new potation of the high seas acquired its present name.