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Previous Volume 332:340 February 2, 1995 Number 5 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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By David N. Whitten and Martin R. Lipp. 200 pp. San Francisco, HarperCollinsWest, 1994. $18. ISBN 0-06-258514-2.

For centuries wine has been assigned health-giving attributes. Sometimes just drops of particular wines were recommended for specific ailments. The Chinese, in particular, invented daunting concoctions — mixtures of wines with snakes, frogs, and the like, for example — to alleviate various maladies. Legends of resurrections from near-death by the intervention of the vine's nectar abound. A vineyard on the Moselle is named Doctor; it carries suitable stories.

One would guess that much of this practice was based chiefly on wishful thinking, but maybe our forebears knew something. The Talmud warned, "Wherever wine is lacking, medicines become necessary." A Russian . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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