1892 Drinks of the world

DRINKS.

347

usually considered non-intoxicant ; but under both these widely extended categories a large number of drinks must enter of which no mention whatever has been made in the preceding pages. It remains for us, therefore, to consider in the present chapter the most interesting and important of these drinks which have been hitherto excluded. Of the curious and, in many cases, repulsive liquids which have from time to time been taken, either to assuage the pangs of human thirst, or to gratify the taste of the human palate in health or in disease, the reader who has not devoted some little time and attention to the investigation of this subject will probably have but a very faint conception To go no farther back on the pathway of time than to the age of John Taylor, the water poet, we find so strange a drink as women's tears. But at a date far earlier than that of the water poet, the date of the Babylonian Talmud, in Machshiriuy vl. 64, there are seven liquids comprehended under the generic term drink (Lev. xi. 34, and therefore liable to ceremonial defilement), dew, water, wine, oil, blood, milk, and honey. Upon every one of these seven liquids something curious and interesting might be written. About these drinks a question arises in the Talmud, whether under water are included such beverages as mulberry water, pomegranate water, and other waters of fruits which have a shem livozu, or compound name. Rambam the great Eagle, more commonly known as Maimonides, seems to exclude these drinks from the general category. By honey is to be understood the