Dissertatio Inauguralis Medica. On Wine. An Inaugural Medical Dissertation. 1829 First Edition Pp. 68, [4] Berolini (Berlin) Typis Ferdinandi Nietack Dark paper tape holds the pamphlet together; no covers. Ownership stamp of Dr. Bassermann-Jordan (Deidesheim) on the first leaf with his ex libris on its verso. Lower right corner cut away to the title page, not affecting text. Foxing throughout. Fair. This dissertation was presented to the Medical Faculty of the Friedrich-Wilhelm University of Berlin, for the degrees of Medicine and Surgery. The pamphlet situates wine within early nineteenth-century academic medicine and chemistry and reflects the converging practices of clinical observation, chemical theory, and natural-historical classification in Berlin's medical culture. It bears the formal Latin apparatus of the university dissertation. The dissertation defines wine as an intoxicating liquid produced by fermentation; discusses fermentation, alcohol formation, tartrate deposits and related chemical principles, citing Georg Ernst Stahl. It considers production and determinants of character (climate, region, vintage, grape variety, method, and age) and advances a geographic classification of European wines, surveying Rhenish, Moselle, Franconian and northern German wines; Hungarian (including Tokaji and Ausbruch); Italian (Lacryma Christi, Vinum de St. Albano, Monte Fiascone, Montepulciano, Vin Santo); Portuguese Port; and Greek sweet wines from Cyprus. Later chapters treat medical uses (diuretic, circulatory, nervous, gastric, certain infant diseases). Latin academic dissertation where fermentation meets diagnosis, mapping Europe’s wines with clinical curiosity - when science, geography, and the cellar spoke the same language.
