B M 13T Ebl ^^1 ■ - iiijii mmm^ 2 l II mmm liiliih^ MEMCAL ^ClnI©(S)L ALCOHOL: ITS PLACE AND POWER BY JAMES MILLER, PROFESSOR OF SURGERY IN THJE UNIVERSITT OF EDINBUEOH, SURGEON IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN FOR SCOTLAND, ETC. ETC. FROM THE NINETEENTH GLASGOW EDITIOl PHILADELPHIA : LIFPSAJ & BLAKISTON CONTENTS. PAOB INTRODUCTION 13 ALCOHOL: ITS PLACE. I. — As A Poisox 24 II. — As A Medicine 42 IIL— As Food 62 IV.— As A Luxury 79 ALCOHOL: ITS POWEPw. I. — As A Poison 94 ll. — As A Medicine 96 IIL— As Food 99 IV. — As A Condiment 100 V. — As A Luxury 101 VI. — As A Support in Labor of the Body lOG VII. — As A Support in Labor op the Mind 118 VIII. — As A Support in Enduring Cold 130 IX. — As A Support in Enduring Heat 138 X. — As A Means of Averting Disease 146 XL— As A Means of Producing Disease 151 XII. — As A Means of Cherishing Age 153 XIIL— As a Means of Prolonging Life 157 XIV. — As Affecting the Mind 158 XV. — As AN Instrument op Vice 161 XVL— As A Special Opponent to Moral Reformation . 168 XVII. — In Clinging to its Victim 169 Conclusion 170 (^i) INTRODUCTION. Drunkenness owns many a cause, and calls for many a cure. Many things are to be done, and many men are needed to do them. The principle of '^ division of labor" is fully recognised in this matter. One of the most obvious causes of drunkenness con- sists in the strange drinking customs of the people. Strong drink not only forms a customary part of their ordinary diet, but whenever any peculiar occasion emerges — be it of grief or sorrow, business or pleasure — an additional amount of strong drink must forthwith be consumed, by all and sundry, if the entertainer would escape censure or contempt. Sensible men have come to see that if drunkenness is to be stayed in its fearful sweep, carrying death and devastation in its track, these drinking customs must be greatly reformed; and means have accordingly been adopted to enlighten the public mind on the sad mix- ture of folly and evil which characterizes them. Good work has been done in this direction. Able authors have expounded the case plainly and powerfully; and reference may be specially made to "The Physiology of Temperance and Total Abstinence," by Dr. Carpenter, and *' The Pathology of Drunkenness," by Dr. Charles Wilson. Both of these treatises are excellent; telling and trustworthy. But a desire has been expressed for (13) 14 INTRODUCTION. a more homely exposition of the matter, and one more readily accessible to the popular hand and mind. An- other workman, accordingly, is needed for this particular department; and I have not felt at liberty to decline the call addressed to me. The whirl of many important avocations, the inevitable inroads on such snatches of leisure and relaxation as may be possible in such a life as mine, might have been pleaded as ground for a refusal. But perhaps such excuses are in most cases sufficiently met by the common proverby "Where there's a will there 's a way." And having a sincere and hearty " will " to help on the good cause of temperance, I have not sought the shelter of any such plea, but rather am con- tent to find and ferret out the "way." Like apologetics might now be urged on you, gentle reader, deprecating your harsh criticism, and craving a generous forbearance in regard to a task hastily and im- perfectly done. But even here I would be silent — ■ satisfied that whatever failings may mar the attempt, the motives which led to it were honest, disinterested, and sincere. Throw aside prejudice — for a time sheathe your critical acumen — give me your patient attention, and, however much I may now and then unintentionally ofi"end in minor points, I hope to convince you that three- fourths of the men and women of Scotland are ill-informed in this vital matter, and daily reaping most disastrous fruits of this ignorance, in both themselves and others A short preliminary statement must be made, giving a general idea of the more ordinary functions of the human body in health. INTRODUCTION. 15 Every function of the living man — whether thinking by help of his brain, for example, or working by means' of his muscles, or secreting through the agency of his glands, produces a corresponding disintegration of the appropriate structure; a certain amount of nervous, muscular, or secreting tissue crumbles down, and, for the time being, is rendered useless to the living economy ; and, besides, its presence any longer — at least in that condition — would prove hurtful. A two-fold action is required : first, to supply renewal for the waste ; and second, to have the wasted material suitably removed. The latter object is accomplished by the blood, which, by the help of veins and absorbents, receives the used up stuff into its backward or venous current, for the purpose of consuming part by the action of oxygen in the lungs, and disposing of what remains by means of the organs of excretion — the liver, bowels, skin, and kidneys. The renewing supply of the waste, from tear and wear, on the other hand, is performed by the arte- rial blood, in its onward current throughout the frame. Filtering through very minute and numerous vessels, called capillaries, it allows that portion of it which is needful to compensate for the ever-recurring loss to escape, and come in contact with and be applied to the parts which need it. The waste is constant — greater according to the amount of exertion made, but always more or less ; and the supply must not only be constant too, and proportional in amount, but also of a certain quality. Send venous blood to muscle, and you mar both its structure and its working. Do the like by the brain, and the result is similar ; you disorder its function 16 INTRODUCTION. invariably, and may easily enough silence it for ever. To nourish, blood must be arterial. Having nourished, it becomes venous — not only useless but noxious to the organs that need nourishment, and fit only to be sent back through the liver and lungs, there to undergo such changes of giving and taking as shall once more qualify it for its work of supply. In this backward course, as already said, it receives and is mingled with the used-up material, whose loss its next wave has to compensate. And whatever tends to send on this doubly-defiled cur- rent over the whole body, with an imperfect performance of the purifying process — technically called depuration — must inevitably cause most serious interference with health and longevity. But the blood is not a mere circling fluid, '^ self-con- tained." In every circuit it makes, it looses largely, both in quality and quantity; and its loss must be made up. This is done through the stomach. Food is taken in there, masticated, softened, and mixed up, so as to be in a state of suspension and solution. The gastric juice — or pecuHar secretion of the stomach — mingles with it; and the digestion is carried on, as if in a stew-pan. Having become a pulpy fluid, called cliyme, the food moves slowly into the alimentary canal ; there it receives farther additions — bile from the liver, and juice from the pancreas or sweet-bread ; the nutritious portion, called vhyhy is taken up by the absorbents, whose various tubes concentrate into one common duct; and this empties its contents into the venous returning blood, just before it begins its purifying circuit through the lungs. So the feeder is fed. INTRODUCTION. 17 But some things — alcoliol happens to be one, and the poison of asps another — are impatient of so round-about a journey; they must be conveyed to the blood at once. They will not wait to be digested ; but, taken up as they are ])y the veins of the stomach, are carried — little if at all changed — into the general venous circulation, and do their work there, whatever it may be, with almost in- stantaneous rapidity. What takes place ordinarily in the lungs requires a little special consideration. The blood having suffered exhaustion and loss in its work of nourishing all the various parts of the body, having received a supply it greatly needed from the stomach and bowels, in the form of chyle — as a help ; and having got also, what in some respects it might have seemed to have been better with- out, the used-up material refuse of life and working — as a burthen, — it passes by the right side of the heart through the lungs ; and in the cell-like ramifications of these, it is brought in all its motley mass into contact with the air, which for that purpose has been taken in by the wind-pipe. This air parts with its oxygen; a large proportion of which unites with carbon and hydro- gen in the blood — carbonic acid and watery vapor being extricated in consequence. This important change, chemically called oxidation, is really a burning. Though not accompanied by light or flame, it is, like ordinary combustion, productive of heat; and, in consequence, it will be readily understood that the process of respiration, when duly performed, fulfils two important objects — aerating the blood, and at the same time helping to main- tain the due temperature of the body. 18 INTRODUCTION. But what is it that is thus oxidized, or burnt, by the breathed air? Two things. Th-e used-up material of the structures, returned in the venous circulation, is either burnt off, or so modified as to be converted into the most suitable forms for final expulsion from the blood. The greater part is thrown off in the form of carbonic acid and watery vapor, while the rest, imperfectly oxi- dated, moves on into the general circulation, to be dealt with exhaustively in the lungs on its next transit, or to be disposed of by the liver, bowels, skin, and kidneys. This treatment of the "waste" is essential, and must be done. But the doing of it is not enough, of itself, to maintain the general temperature. And so a portion of food, digested in the stomach, and received by the blood as chyle, is specially devoted to the process of burning too ; that portion consisting of such articles of diet as contain no nitrogen : oil and sugar being special examples. In this wondrous living factory of ours, the waste ma- terial is not only burned off — as farmers do " wrack " on the surface of their fields — there is besides a special heating apparatus constantly at work; and so, by the two-fold process, the blood is purified of its hurtful matter, while the whole frame is maintained in its due heat. Let either part of this process flag, and evil must ensue. Burn off all the blood's impurity, yet have an insufficient supply of extra fuel from the stomach — the body must grow cold.* Send an inordinate amount of peculiarly * It is not alleged that the whole of the heating process is done in the lungs. On the contrary, there is good reason to suppose (as will immediately be stated,) that every act of nutrition and disintegration of tissue throughout the body— every change from fluid to solid, and I INTRODUCTION. 19 combustible* material from the stomach, so that it shall do almost all the burning — then the blood's impurity cannot be sufficiently consumed ; venous blood will come to circulate more or less, instead of arterial; and the most serious consequences cannot fail to happen. The kidneys, and skin, and liver, will make great exertions, no doubt — as excretory organs — to throw out the evil thus forced through the system ; but they will not wholly succeed ; and they themselves will suffer injury in the strain. The blood will remain impure, important organs of the body will be thrown into a state of disorder, and disease of a serious kind may be established. But the whole of the oxygen taken in by the lungs is not thus accounted for. About a fourth passes into the system, with the blood, without being spent at all on oxidation of the "waste." This portion of the oxygen cannot well be traced in its course ; but there is good from solid to fluid — is accompanied with disengagement of caloric. But obviously while much of the "oxidation" is done in the lungs, almost all the oxygen enters hy the lungs, whereby the " oxidation," or burning is performed. * Whether it be because alcohol is "iieculiarly combustible," or not, may not be quite determined ; but Prout and others have expe- rimentally ascertained that less carbonic acid than usual is evoked during the presence of alcohol in the blood, and that that fluid is decidedly darker than in persons untainted by the "poison." It would almost seem as if alcohol, circulating in the blood, to a con- siderable extent suspended, for the time, the chemico-vital processes proper to the fluid in its normal state. Thus the oxidation of the phosphorus of waste tissue is sometimes so interrupted by alcohol, that the body of the drunkard smells of phosphorus, his breath pre- sents a visible phosphorence, and his urine is luminous in the dark. As will afterwards be seen, this is the only luminosity which alcohol imparts to the debauchee. 20 INTRODUCTION. reason to believe that it acts an important part in the change of the nutritious part of the arterial blood into living tissue — supplying renewal for the "waste;" and that it is again active in the crumbling down of that tissue — constituting the " waste ; " in both actions evol- ving caloric. And so here is a third way of maintaining the general temperature. A word as to the action of poisons. Applied to a part, poisons have various effects. Some, like potass, acids, and other caustics, destroy all structure; others, like alcohol and ammonia, irritate and inflame; others, as prussic acid, impress mainly the nerves. The constitutional effect is also various. The poison, more or less rapidly absorbed into the blood, might be circulated equably over the whole system. According to a strange law, however, such diffusion does not occur; but, on the contrary, certain poisons seek out certain parts, and act on them primarily and chiefly — drawn thither by a vital, as if by a chemical attraction. Tobacco, digitalis, and the upas poison, for example, act specially upon the heart ; arsenic affects the bowels, and mucous membranes in general ; cantharides, the kidneys ; iodine, the glands ; strychnia, the spinal cord ; alcohol, opium, and all narcotics, the brain. Some kill directly and at once ; others more remotely, by the induction of secondary disease. Some exert definite effects, dose by dose ; others pro- duce their special results only after frequent and con- tinued repetition. Some produce continuous results ; others, as the ma- laria, afford intervals of apparent immunity. ALCOHOL: ITS PLACE *' Let everything have a place, and everything be in its place." This is a good old Scottish maxim, pregnant with both thrift and wisdom. And had it but its full sway over the common household thing whose ominous name heads the page, the world were many times fairer, richer, and better, than it is this day. But in order to put and keep anything in its proper place, we must ascertain and determine what that place is. And, accordingly, let us at once proceed to make some inquiry in this direction, so far as alcohol is concerned. Under the term " alcohol," is included, let it be dis- tinctly understood, every kind of intoxicating drink. All the varieties of spirits, wines, and malt liquors, are the same as to their intoxicating quality; that invariably depends upon the presence of alcohol. This may be more or less diluted, mixed, colored, and flavored ; or, as in the case of malt liquors, combined with a small quantity of nutritive material;* but it is always pre- sent, and according to its amount is the intoxicating *" Very small in the best of them, especially if you exclude the sac- charine stuflFs. For, according to Liebig, suppose a man to consume, daily, eight or ten quarts of " the best Bavarian beer," he will obtain from it in the course of twelve months, no more than the same quan- tity of nutritive constituents contained in a five-pound loaf of bread. (21) 22 alcohol: ITS PLACE. power of the beverage. A man is apt to draw a broad distinction — greatly in his own favor — between him- self drinking beer and another drinking brandy, as a daily habit; but the truth is, that both are drinking the same thing, only in a different guise and dilution; chemically and practically, there is much the same dif- ference as between one who drinks spirits " neat" and another who drinks his allowance of the same thing largely "watered." The one drinks alcohol slightly diluted; the other drinks alcohol much diluted, and somewhat modified by flavor; but both are drinking alcohol. Not a day passes but you may hear, " I am no drinker ; for years I have never tiJuched spirits ; I take nothing but wine." The man who so expresses himself may be in the habit of taking his pint of sherry, or quart of claret, daily, or all but daily; and, while honestly convinced that he is touching no " spirits," is really swallowing the same amount of alcohol as if he had taken a glass or two of raw brandy or whisky instead. He believes that spirits are injurious; he would not take them for the world ; yet all the while he is taking them ; and surely it is of great importance that he should be undeceived. Let it be well understood then, at starting, that all intoxicating beverages contain alcohol, as their characteristic and essential ingredient; and how- ever they may vary in taste or appearance, their chemi- cal constitution as intoxicants is practically the same. Beer, no doubt, is less hurtful than brandy — wine less dangerous than whisky; but chiefly because they contain less alcohol. And what is this alcohol ? Whether pure or diluted, alcohol: ITS PLACE. 23 v,'bere should it stand in the arrangement of things ? As a poison ? As a medicine ? An article of food, or of luxury ? In a household we can readily imagine — say in a hotel — a long list of articles of diet fit and offered for use ; a medicine-chest, too, with a carefully- arranged catalogue of its contents ; and hung up in some conspicuous spot, for readiness of access in emergencies, perhaps a tabular list of the most common poisons, with short and simple rules for their counteraction. Into which of these lists ought alcohol to go ? The question is not, How do men generally consider it, and in what category is it placed? That were easily answered — though somewhat unsatisfactorily. Most men call it food^ and use it daily as such, in some form or other. Others esteem it a luxury; and their use of it accord- ingly is but occasional. A few regard it medicinally, and are ready to give it a high character as an assuager of the ills of life — all but a panacea. Few, very few, ever dream of it being a poison. Let us see how the truth lies. Can it be that men are using as an article of food, daily and freely, what is essentially a poison ? In cooking, were an appreciable amount of verdigris from the pot or pan to be mingled with their stews and boils ; in their tea and coffee, were the water to contain a grave proportion of lead from the pipe or cistern; in the flavoring of the sweet course, were the ratafia to give out a decided quantity of prussic acid, — the effects would tell, inquiry would be made, and the contamination would be avoided. And can it be that men are daily mingling with their food, in no niggard amount, what is as truly poisonous as the 24 alcohol: ITS place. prussic acid, copper, or lead — taking little note of its evil effects, and taking no means to remove the adulte- ration ? Let us see. r alcohol as a poison. ALcdhol IS a poison. In chemistry and physiology, this is its proper place. Many readers may receive this dogmatic assertion with a " Pooh, pooh " — " Fanaticism and folly " — " We know better." Let me support the assertion, therefore, "by authority. " The sedative action of alcohol on the brain," says Christison — and we know no higher autho- rity, either as regards poisons or the articles of the materia medica — " constitutes it a powerful narcotic poison. For its effects as such, if rapidly brought on by a large dose, there is no antidote Icnown — the only efficacious treatment consisting of speedy evacuation of the stomach, and the employment of brisk external stimuli." Now let us inquire as to the effects of this formidable agent. Obviously, they will vary according to the age and condition of the recipient, and especially according to the manner and amount of the administration. I. Alcohol absolutely pure is seldom if ever taken internally. To make it at all tolerable to the stomach, it must be diluted ; and the strongest brandy, whisky, or other "spirit," contains a large proportion of water — thirty, forty, or fifty per cent. But though thus modified, a large quantity in the adult, or a small quantity in the child, may prove rapidly fatal. It is almost at once absorbed by the veins of the ALCOHOL AS A POISON. 25 stomach, and, mixing with the blood, is carried to all parts of the body, aflFecting certain of these very spe- cially — namely, the nervous centres.* These are para- lyzed ; the heart stops, and life ceases. A man quaffs a quart of brandy almost at a draught, tumbles down, and dies on the spot. The shock of the large dose of alcohol on his nervous system, with which it is almost immediately brought into direct contact through ab- sorption into the blood, acts like a blow on the head, or a kick on the stomach. Prussic acid is not more deadly. To obtain some idea of the rapidity with which alcohol dashes through every obstacle to reach the brain — the material organ of reason, and the special object of the poison when once it gains access to the body — consider the following experiment of Dr. Percy: — He injected about two ounces and a half of alcohol into the stomach of a dog, and the animal dropped dead almost instanta- neously. As soon thereafter as he could remove the brain — an operation which occupied only a few minutes — and place it in an apparatus for distillation, he by that process extracted from it a notable quantity of the alco- hol — more than from an equal weight of any other part of the body, or of the blood itself. II. But the dose may not be such as to kill at once by shock. The bottle, we shall suppose, is consumed more leisurely, and by and by the man is found in a state closely resembling apoplexy — with suffused face, * " I can't drink spirits, or even wine ; it goes to my head. I find it instantly go to my head." The words are right, literally, as well as metaphorically, though the speaker thinks, perhaps, only of the latter sense. 20 ALCOHOL: ITS PLACE. laboring pulse, heavy, noisy breathing, and total insen sibility. What has happened? The alcohol absorb' has reached the nervous centres as before, and has but paralyzed their functions ; in consequence, the hea: and lungs are both acting most imperfectly; the blood is failing to receive its due proportion of oxygen in its oozy passage through the lungs, and is, besides, directly altered for the worse by the alcohol's actual presence in it. The man is choking gradually, as if with a rope round his neck, or a clot of blood in his brain. The hand of alcohol is on his throat; breathing becomes slower and slower, the heart beats more and more faintly, the body grows cold, and, in no long time, all is still in death. Peculiar circumstances may render such an event pos- sible under even a comparatively small dose. Ordinary "intoxication" may not have occurred, yet the alcohol may so injuriously determine to and act on the brain, as to cause congestive apoplexy, modified by symptoms of poisoning. And under this life may give way, as in the following case: — A gentleman supped out, drank several tumblers of toddy, came home, and went to bed. In the morning he was found insensible. A physician, hurriedly called, at once recognised the symptoms as those of narcotic poisoning, and treated the patient ac- cordingly. Reaction began, but failed, and death occurred within a few hours. On dissection, no organic lesion or other cause of death was detected. The contents of the stomach were carefully secured, and made over to the care of a skilful chemist. Morphia was suspected, but nothing could be found — save alcohol. ALCOHOL AS A POISON. 27 III. In the first class of cases, death is as by shock j, in the second, by coma; and examples of both are by co means rare. There is a third class, however, far more numerous. The man is stronger, the dose is less, or more slowly taken; and, after a heavy stupor — far more deep and dangerous than ordinary sleep — the drunkard slowly evinces signs of returning consciousness. He has been " dead drunk,'' and all but dead actually. The choking was begun and going on as before 3 but, fortunately, the poisoning " took a turn," and the poison itself having been more or less rapidly thrown out of the system by the organs of excretion, as well as burnt off in the lungs, the brain lightens, and the conditions of life are restored. Gradually the man returns to something like his wonted self, but retaining many a plain trace of his narrow escape. He was all but poisoned. What did it ? Al- cohol. Had he died, you might have found, on dissec- tion, in him as well as in each of the former victims, the alcohol unchanged, not only in the general mass of blood, but specially in the substance of the brain — a texture for which it has a peculiar affinity. These are examples of plain poisoning — a common word, which carries an alarming sound ; but put it into a classical shape, and, strangely, it seems much less formidable. "Was he poisoned f "Oh,, no; only intoxicated.'" And yet, literally, the words mean the same thing. IV. Intoxication ! We need not describe what every one has seen, and not a few have felt. Let us, however, trace the action of the agent in this too common variety of alcohol's effects. Reaching the brain, more gradually 28 A L C O H L : I T S P L A C E . and in smaller quantities than in the previous examples,^ the alcohol acts as a stimulant at first. The intellectual functions are excited, as shown by gaiety, talkativeness, animated expression, play of fancy, and increased rapidity as well as variety of thought. But the paramount func- tion of voluntary control — the great distinguishing char- acteristic of the human mind — is already affected other- wise than by increase or exaltation. While perception, memory, and imagination, are specially excited, the will, almost from the first, is sensibly impaired. The mind suffers in its best part, through even slight tam- pering thus with the material organ wherewith it is connected. The heart is roused, and beats quicker; the general circulation is hastened, and the whole frame feels warmer, stronger, and better. As the dose is continued, its effects are not only observed in the functions of the anterior and upper parts of the brain — its intellectual portion — but extend to the deeper and posterior parts, connected with special sense and muscular power. Sight and hearing are affected, the limbs grow weak and tottering, the head swims, the tongue refuses distinct articulation. At the same time, intellectual excitement becomes more and more decidedly intellectual perversion, partaking of the nature of delirium; reason is at a discount, and voluntary control placed more and more in abeyance. What is specially human is lessened, what is merely animal is intensified ; the passions rise rebelliously, and defy all moral control ; and the man becomes, under his own act, what the law has quaintly termed him, "voluntarms I ALCOHOL AS A POISON. 29 demon.^' He is temporarily insane, and fitted for any act of violence to himself or others. But as the poisoning material filters on into the frame, its efi"ects advance still farther. All semblance of stimu- lation, in any part or way, is over now. Intellect is all but departed ; and muscular power, as well as the special senses, are gone or going too. Besides involvement of the whole brain, the upper part of the spinal cord is f^ufi'cring; and, in consequence, the heart is weakened, the pulse is laboring, the respiration is oppressed ; the face that awhile ago was pale and haggard, is growing swollen and livid ; and unless a halt is called now, matters will speedily arrive at the condition of No. III. — life in peril by coma. The best that can happen is a heavy death-like sleep of long duration, with an awakening to fever of body and misery of mind. Certain advocates of alcohol talk in a somewhat odd fashion of such an event happening *^ occasionally." They admit that intoxication is wrong, in every sense ; but they protest that its "occasional" occurrence ought not, in all fairness, to shut out the man's drinking from the claim of being reckoned compatible with " modera- tion." And taking this for granted, they then go on to speak complacently of how it is to be atoned for, thus : " which excess he sleeps ofi" that night — or pays for by a headache next morning, and hears no more of it." Indeed ! He has a heavy sleep, no doubt ; but he does not " sleep it all off; " some remains. He pays a heavy bill in the morning, too ; that is certain. But can he show a discharge in full ? No, no. His creditor is not 30 alcohol: ITS PLACE. so easily satisfied. The headache is only a sum in hand; one instalment of the price of the pleasure. There are other payments to be made by and by. " He hears more of it," to his cost; as will duly appear in the sequel. V. Lead, given in small but frequently-repeated doses (considerably short of perilling life at once by poisoning), ultimately paralyzes the muscular system ; arsenic, simi- larly used, produces serious consequences upon the mu- cous membranes; and alcohol, in a smaller dose than at any time to threaten a fatal poisoning, yet by frequent repetition may produce a most damaging result upon the entire nervous system — not accumulating in substance within the body, as these other poisons may do, but keeping up a constant, and consequently cumulative action on that part of the frame. This state has been called " alcoliolismus chronicus" or " chronic alcohol- poisoning." And it might be termed alcohol-founder. The whole body trembles, but especially the hands, the limbs, and the tongue; eyesight and hearing are impaired ; the skin is affected by various morbid sensa- tions ; the mind at best is weak, and often disordered ; general debility increases ; sleep is capricious, disturbed, and unrefreshing ; strength, appetite, flesh, comfort, energy — all disappear; there is no relief, save what is both temporary and delusive — in continuance of the poison; the stomach rejects food, and puts forth foul secretions of its own ; startings seize the limbs ; epilepsy may follow; and the man may die. Arsenic could not sap life more surely; and all may be done, be it remem- ALCOIIOLAS A POISON. 31 ered, without the victim having ever once been abso- lutely drunk. VI. This is sad work with the body. But the mind, too, is not without its danger and damage. In the course of the chronic poisoning just spoken of, or in the midst of a more active and acute debauch, the condition of " insanity," to which allusion has been made (p. 28), may not prove temporary — that is, passing off with the other immediate effects of the drunkenness — but may be prolonged. The man becomes sober, but is mad ; and may remain so for some time. This madness — technically termed ^^ delirium ehriosum" — is usually of an active and dangerous kind, and may entail much evil upon the victim by reason of violence done to himself or others. And, besides, it is liable to become permanent — changing its character, and settling down into confirmed mental disease. VII. Or the mental affection may be of a different form still — what is termed " deUrium tremens'' : — the body weak, the nerves unstrung, the mind a prey to all aanner of rapidly-shifting delusions, with suspicion and iear; violence to others improbable, but injury to self not unlikely. This may be the result of an occasional bout of hard drinking, or may form a part of the " chronic T>oisoning." Ordinarily, it is connected with some aggra- . ated excess in the habitually intemperate. As a sample, take a case — in some respects curious. \ gentleman of middle age, and active business habits, :ad for years been intemperate; and more than one attack 0? delirium tremens had imperilled his life. "When first I saw him, he was in his shirt, hopping incessantly 32 alcohol: its place. from chair to chair, in order to avoid myriads of snakes that were crawling on the carpet. Then the vision changed upon him, and he rushed about more violently to escape from men following him with sharp knives. Suddenly he leaped upon the bed, arranged his limbs quietly, and scarcely breathed. He told us he was dead, and read out an announcement of his sudden and unex- pected decease, from the page of an imaginary Couranty concluding with, " Friends will please to accept of this intimation." So he lay for some minutes, affording breathing time to his attendants ; but all of a sudden he rose, went into the sitting-room, and began to write with a trembling hand hastily at the table. He said that he had stupidly forgotten to add a codicil to his will, and was glad to find that it was not too late to supply the omission. Having written a tolerably-coherent state- ment, to the effect that he had died on such a date, and that he begged his employers to support his son as his successor in business, he quietly returned to his bedroom; but no sooner did he cast his eye on the empty bed, than he broke forth in a most violent tirade against the attendants for having stolen his body. " Where is it ? where is it ? I left it lying there when I went into the parlor to write the codicil, and when my back was turned some scoundrel has taken it away. Bring it back in- stantly." And so he lapsed into excitement again. But by and by stupor came on, he lay quiet once more, and, despite of all the help that we could give, the ^' died at Edinburgh " became a sad reality. The man does not always die, however ] he may re- cover many a time, drinking on and on ; but death in ALCOHOL AS A POISON. 66 the paroxysm is not unfrequent ; and, besides, this trem- bling delirium may pass away, only to be followed by steady insanity. VIII. There is yet another evil — an occasional, nay, by no means unfrequent, evidence of alcoholic poisoning — " Oinomania." For a time, the victim is well ] sober, active, trustworthy. But of a sudden, a furious and fiendish impulse draws him helplessly to the bottle. He gulps down the contents rapidly, glass by glass, as if his only object were instant and complete intoxication; and once drunk, he will scarcely permit himself to grow sober again, till probably a week or ten days have elapsed. Then he gradually gets hold of a lucid interval — to be rudely broken up once more, however, at no remote date- The craving is that of a madman, and all but absolutely irresistible. As one has himself said, in terrible words, " If a bottle of brandy stood at one end of the table, and the pit of hell yawned at the other, and I were convinced that I should be pushed in so soon as I took one glass, I could not refrain." This state is never of spontaneous origin, like many forms of mental disorder, but is always preceded by in- temperance. At the same time, it is most important to remember, that some constitutions are much more sus- ceptible than others, requiring comparatively little pre- vious indulgence in strong drink to produce the evil. For example, I was lately consulted regarding a lady who had become a frightful oinomaniac, and whose malady originated — or had been, as it were, suggested — by the habit of carrying strong spirits occasionally in the mouth for the cure of toothache. "Against her own 3 34 alcohol: ITS PLACE. better judgment and the voice of conscience, she is forced on," says my correspondent. " For days on end she has been out of one stupor into another. On two succeeding days of this week she has consumed a quart bottle of strong whisky; the next day, or rather nighty when people were asleep, she got hold of some key which was supposed to secure from her a bottle of spirits and another of wine, and within twenty-four hours this was also consumed, no one being able to snatch it from her." Here I might stop and close the evidence, claiming a verdict against the Spirit of Wine as a poisoner. But there are minor counts in the indictment ; and to make the case more complete, suffer me to state these very briefly. The drinker, escaping or surviving the major results, is still liable to serious injury, and of various kinds. 1. Absorbed into the blood, unchanged, alcohol cor- rupts or poisons that important fluid. It becomes less coagulable — a state favorable to the occurrence of hem- orrhages, and unfavorable to the arrest of loss of blood ; unfavorable also to healthy nutrition. Besides, it assumes more or less of the venous character ; holding far more than it ought of waste material, and so becoming "poisoned" — to use the ordinary language of the schools. The alcohol has done this, as we shall see ; taking the oxygen of the lungs to itself, and leaving no sufficient supply for oxidating the "waste." This "waste" so retained, seems to be converted in part into fat — waiting to be burnt ; and the blood of drunkards, accordingly, is ALCOHOL AS A POISON. 35 found to contain an unusual amount of fatty contents — (this fat not burnt) — apt to take the place of the healthy tissues, as will be immediately stated. Poison the blood, and you poison the whole man. And do we not find the drunkard soon showing plain signs of this ? — ill nourished, flabby, weak, watery in his tissues, sodden and sad in color. Sometimes he grows lean and lank ; sometimes he gathers unhealthy fatness — the fat being put down in wrong places, and found where no fat should be. Internal accumulations of this redundancy oppress the vital organs ; and the partial conversion of muscular and other tissues into fat, constitutes one of the most serious diseases to which mankind are exposed. With such degeneration of the heart, for example, our life is not worth an hour's pur- chase. We may at any moment fall down dead. And no single agent does half the work of alcohol in causing such degeneration. 2. Other heart-diseases, as well as aneurisms, and varicose veins, have also their origin, very frequently, in the free and sustained use of alcohol. The blood- vessels' cannot with impunity bear a constant, unnatural, and inordinate stimulus, with a consequently hurried circulation. 3. Alcohol's special action on the brain and nervous system we have already seen (page 28). The functional mischief is manifest ; and there is good reason to believe that an injurious change takes place in the structure too. When an anatomist wishes to preserve a brain or spinal cord, for the purpose of dissection, he places it in strong spirits ; and it grows firm and hard there. Why 36 alcohol: ITS PLACE. may not something of a like change take place during life, when the organ is from time to time saturated with alcoholic blood, as in the case of the drunkard it cannot fail to be ? * And is it wise to harden, or to run the risk of hardening, a living brain ? Will that benefit a living nerve, or nervous centre, which preserves it when dead? Besides, with disordered blood, disordered circulation, and disordered brain, obviously this latter organ must be peculiarly liable to the occurrence of dangerous disease — such as inflammation, congestion, and hemorrhage. Every one knows how often thus the drunkard is taken away. Sometimes, too, a creeping palsy comes on. And epilepsy is one of the most frequent and formidable com- plications of habitual intemperance. 4. The stomach is, of course, primarily affected. On its lining membrane the alcohol acts as a stimulant; and may at first do little more, except when in excessive quantity and strength, than excite and exalt its func- * " Does drink freely ?" " Oh, yes — and stands it well. He is a hard-headed fellow." "What a depth of hidden meaning there is in many of the common phrases of life ! Hard-headed ? Yes ; thick outside, and hard within. That the brain is really hardened, seems a fair conclusion from experiments of Liebig on the power of alcohol to displace the natural and healthy water-constituent of all animal tissues* Many tissues and organs of our bodies consist normally of from one-half to three-fourths of water; and when these are immersed in alcohol, more than half the water is displaced, owing to the capil- lary attraction of the tissues for alcohol and water being less than for water alone. Hence, doubtless, in part at least, the earthy pre- cipitation so common in the blood-vessels of the intemperate — the water in their textures being too scanty to keep certain saline matters in solution. ALCOHOL AS A POISON. 37 tion. But such simple action proves very temporary, under habitual repetitions of a liberal dose. Congestion and inflammation take the place of simple excitement. Instead of digestion being favored and quickened, it is retarded and perverted — all the thousand and one evils of dyspepsia setting in ; while, by an acute inflammatory attack, danger to life may be at any time superadded. After a time, the drunkard comes to have no stomach at all. As a digester, its occupation is gone. Food is rejected, along with foul, loathsome secretions from the diseased lining membrane. The skinned fiery lips and sour water-brash of the drunkard are proverbial. The organ ceases to be a concocter of chyme, and degenerates into a kind of sponge, through which the alcohol filters into the general frame. The man lives no longer on food, but like a snipe on suction. 5. Next to the stomach, the liver suffers. The alco- hol, absorbed and passing at once into the veins of that organ, arouses an increased activity in its working. And well it may; for by its continued presence in the onward blood, it prevents the effectual burning off of the noxious effete matter, or waste (page 17), which then falls to be disposed of in unusual and unnatural quantity by the liver and other excretory organs. And the natural con- sequence of this accumulated labor is the invasion of disease in various forms. Congestion, inflammation, and functional disorder are common occurrences in the drunkard's flank ; seldom can lie say that his " withers are unwrung ;" and ere long a chronic structural change will have set in, so peculiar to himself as to be ordinarily 38 alcohol: ITS PLACE. recognised as "the drunkard's liver" — or tlie "gin liver" — in great measure due probably to the almost constant actual presence of alcohol in the substance of the organ. The advocates of alcohol, however, demur to all this, and protest that their client cannot in justice be accused of constant and habitual action against any part of the frame, seeing that it is so very rapidly got rid of — partly by burning in the lungs, partly through the organs of excretion. And by way of strengthening their plea, they go on to admit, that were alcohol to be constantly in the blood the result must be fatal, or at least most formidable. Now, we admit that alcohol is " worked off" with great rapidity; far more quickly than almost any thing else ordinarily swallowed by man. And from that circumstance we are simple enough to suppose, that man's frame does not wish for, and by natural instinct resents its presence. There would seem to be other things than a "vacuum" that nature abhors ; and alcohol is one of them. She employs all her energies to get rid of the unwelcome intruder, no doubt; and strains her excretory organs in doing so, endangering them with disease through overwork. But still the success is far from instantaneous. Many hours ordinarily elapse ere all is clear. For instance, after a tolerably hard drink a man goes to bed, and sleeps heavily, if not soundly, for eight or ten hours. On rising then, his kidneys plainly tell that the alcohol was plentiful within him just before. At breakfast, the morning dram may renew the supply. In the forenoon comes the biscuit, with ALCOHOL AS A POISON. 39 glass of slierry, or mouthful of brandy. At dinner there is a fair allowance of alcoholics taken in ; and supper over (for he makes a point of supping, for the sake of what is to follow — he, too, abhorring a vacuum), he cannot go to bed without his "night-cap." Is it not very plain, that thus, in the case of the habitual drinker, who may perhaps never actually reach the crisis that perils the claim to "moderation," a tolerably constant supply of alcohol is kept circulating in his frame ? And was it not a rash admission for the alcoholic advocate to make, that the constant presence of alcohol in the living blood was in the last degree disastrous ? None of the intervals between the " drinks " is so prolonged as that of the night sleep, during which the proof of alcohol's presence — within the frame, if not in the blood itself — is both simple and satisfactory. 6. The kidneys, however, do not receive the alcohol in so pure a form, or in so direct a way, as does the liver. Ere it reaches them, it is modified and mixed up with the general mass of blood. Yet there is alcoholic strength and amount enough to stimulate these organs to increased working; at the same time giving them something to work for, in extruding, like the liver, an excess of redundant and injurious material. The alcohol itself, too, passes off in no inconsiderable quantity; a fact, as has just been stated, of which every one must be aware, who observes the odor of its diuretic results. And the consequence of this habitual excessive strain on the kidneys is, once more, disease — congestion, inflam- mation, or chronic change. 40 alcohol: its place. Alcohol is a common cause of what is termed "Bright'a kidney," — a most formidable disease, of gradual and insidious origin.* 7. The skin, like the liver and kidneys, excretes; that is, besides other duties, assists in carrying off re- dundant and effete matter from the system. Its millions of pores are busy at that employment day and night. And they find it quite sufl&cient work to overtake their ordinary task in a satisfactory way. But the intempe- rate throws a heavy burden upon them. There comes the same double effect as on the liver and kidneys — stimulation to a higher rate of working, and an increased amount of work to do. The whole skin suffers in con- sequence, by blotches and blains, by erysipelas, and car- buncles, and boils, by chronic discoloration and disease. And those parts suffer most which are most exposed to view; as if the suffering texture, by a kind of retributive justice, were permitted to declare to all onlookers the sign of its injurious treatment : " Puflfing the cheeks, blearing the curious eyes, Studding the face with vicious heraldry — What pearls and rubies doth the wine disclose, Making the purse poor to enrich the nose ! " The skin-disease in question, or at least something like it, may arise from some other and more reputable cause, no doubt ; but in all cases the evidence points in one way, and in most cases truly, as every one knows. " The show of their countenance doth witness against them." * Dr. Christison's cases of Brighf s disease show a proportion of from three-fourths to four-fifths occurring in drunkards. ALCOHOL AS A POISON. 41 " Does the priest drink ?" said one Irishman to another. " No ; never a dhrop." " Then how comes it that his face is pebble-dashed with strawberries ? '^ Alcohol, then, kills in large doses, and half kills in smaller ones. It produces insanity, delirium, fits. It poisons the blood, and wastes the man. The brain suffers most injury, both in structure and function j but there is no vital organ in the body in which there is not induced, sooner or later, more or less, disorder and disease. I might go on. The list of evils is not exhausted, wherewith alcohol is found in most damnatory conjunc- tion. But I feel confident that the case is already more than proved. Some theorists, indeed, perversely argue, that though alcohol, in large doses, is doubtless poisonous, yet, be- cause it is not apparently hurtful when taken in small quantity, or "moderation," that therefore it is no poison. The same men may, in the same way, assoilize every article of the animal and vegetable kingdoms that is brought as panel to their bar. Prussic acid in a full dose will kill you like a shot; but doses of two or three drops of the diluted acid, taken three or four times a day, not only do no harm, in certain circumstances, but even effect a great deal of positive good. Therefore prussic acid is no true poison ! And so of arsenic. Swallow an ounce, and you die in torture. But in Styria, you will be told that it " actually gives, both to horses and men, increased vigor, increased beauty, and an enviable rejuvenescence, when taken regularly in 42 alcohol: ITS PLACE. minute doses." Ergo, ^^ horrible arsenic" is no true poison ! Is not this horrible quibbling ? Arguing thus, you virtually contend for the extinction of poisons as a class. According to your way of it, there can be no true poison. And verily there is none, if alcohol be not such. But, I say again, my case is more than proved ; and I confidently claim a verdict of " Guilty." ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINAL AGENT. From among the fiercest poisons, as just hinted, come some of our most valued medicines — a startling fact, perhaps, to the uninitiated, but nevertheless most true. A knife of very keen edge, when used by a light and dexterous hand, will make a cleaner and better wound than the blunter instrument which has to be pressed heavily on the part. And so the remedy of greatest power, when skilfully timed and apportioned to the varying progress of the case, is often more valuable in urgent and dangerous circumstances than the "simples" of the timid practitioner. A few small doses of the one may turn the current of disease, and save valuable life ; while, under the other, large and sustained dosings may prove comparatively unavailing. Prussic acid, aconite, strychnine, arsenic, opium, belladonna, are at once in- tense poisons, and admirable medicines in the hands of the skilful. And we venture to say that not a week passes in the experience of any physician in large prac- tice, in which some of these are not administered for the cure of disease, and with the best efi'ect. ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 43 Into this category we cannot refuse to introduce alco- hol, and alcohol cannot refuse to come. By some authorities it has been classed among the Stimulants; by others, and more accurately, among the Narcotics. The latter, says Headland, " are defined to be medicines which pass from the blood to the nerves, or nerve-centres, which act so as first to exalt nervous force, and then to depress it, and have also a special action en the intellectual part of the brain." Narcotics he further divides into three orders : those causing ine- briation — those causing sleep — and those causing deli- rium. Among the inebriants, he places alcohol first. " The medicines of this order," says he, " taking alcohol as the type, approach more nearly to stimulants than any other narcotics. When given in small doses, their narcotic operation may hardly be perceived. They are then exhilarants ; slightly quickening the pulse, and en- livening the mental faculties. When given in large doses, this stimulating action on the heart and mental powers occurs first, and is now more intense ; but it is soon succeeded by disturbance and impairment of the intellectual functions." This latter effect — that of depression, intoxication, or narcotism — is seldom required by the practitioner of medicine; unless, indeed, he clumsily adopts it as a means of deadening sensation to pain, or relaxing mus- cular power during surgical operations. Chloroform, we know, does this much better — the effect being more speedy, more manageable, more transient, and conse- quently less injurious to the system. The medicinal dose of alcohol, then, is not large, but 44 alcohol: ITS PLACE. small * and frequently repeated, with the effect of pro- ducing and maintaining the first or stimulant effect, so long as this may be required. And from what has already been said, it will be readily understood that the stimulant power of this agent is exerted on the nervous system and on the circulation, but mainly and primarily on the former. I. When a man becomes faint, for example, from fear, pain, or sudden injury, and it is desirable to rouse him from the state of sliock in which he is found, what more suitable than ammonia — a pure stimulant ? or brandy — a stimulant-narcotic ? The dose of the latter must be moderate, however; as, when speaking of the poisons, we have seen how a large amount of alcohol rapidly swallowed by the strongest and healthiest of men may produce shock, or depression of the nervous power, of the most formidable kind. And it is only by skilful repetitions of this moderate dose — sometimes even minute — that the rousing effect on the nervous system is produced and maintained, until reaction has fairly set in, and the state of shock has passed away. II. In certain fevers — such as typhus — there is marked and dangerous tendency to nervous depression ; under which, if unchecked, the vital functions becomo' faint, and are apt to cease. Practitioners have in con- sequence learnt, in certain cases, and still more in cer- tain epidemics, to anticipate and oppose this evil, by an * There are exceptional cases — such as those of flooding, or othei great loss of blood — where the exhaustion is so great that very con- ciderable quantities of alcoholics are required in order to arouse the system, and prevent fatal sinking. ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 45 early and judicious use of stimulants. What ! wine and brandy in fever ! Most certainly. Then is the time to see the use and value of alcohol. There is nothing in nature without its use. Scorpions, snakes, fleas, bugs, and such like unpleasant and apparently unprofitable specimens of zoology, may sometimes puzzle the ordi- nary observer who would define their exact use in'^ society; yet, bewildered though he be, he may rest satisfied of this, that their operations are beneficial, sometimes and somehow. And so of alcohol. Often it is most noxious; and looking at the wide-spread mis- chief that it is ever working around them, superficial observers may be tempted to think that it is only evil, and evil continually. But in this, as in other things, the saying of the wise man comes true, " To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." While standing at the bedside of a fever case — urgent, yet doing well under wine — the ship in a terrible sea, yet obeying the helm in its every turn, and steering steadily — I have often wished to have a tippler or a drunkard on one side of me, with a " fanatical tee- totaller" on the other, in order that I might have the pleasure of saying, " There, gentlemen, there is a glo- rious example of the true use of wine." The man is taking a tablespoonful of sherry, every hour, or every two hours — or a somewhat larger allowance of claret, or a smaller proportion of brandy, — the form and dose of the alcohol varying to meet the varying phases of the dis- ease ; and at every dose you can almost see — far more truly than you can see grass growing in a warm summer shower, after long drought — r health returning to the 46 alcohol: ITS PLACE. otherwise sinkiog frame : — the cheek less flushed, the skin more cool, the eye more steady and clear, the pulse less frequent and more strong, the tongue more moist and clean, the breathing easier, the sensations all more comfortable. What is the alcohol doing ? Not feeding the man in reality, as one might be apt to suppose ; but stimulating the nervous system; spurring the nerves and nerve-centres, and keeping them awake, when other- wise they would go to sleep, and leave the vital func- tions, first to flag, and then to fail utterly — going to sleep too. The nervous power is kept active, and this excites the vital force to work also. "But the vital strength," you will object, "must be soon used up in this way — exhausted." There is a risk of that, no doubt; but better to run that risk, than let all perish at once without an efibrt. And by and by the stomach will be enabled to receive some food again, and to digest it too ; whereby the vital strength will be sustained and replenished, so as to meet the strain. The steamship in the storm — to take up our illustration once more — has but a limited supply of coal ; and a vigilant production of steam, to work the engines, as she labors in the sea, will tend hltimately to exhaustion of the store no doubt; but still the only chance of safety lies in "cracking on," with the hope that thereby she may be enabled to reach some friendly shelter, to both " coal and water" for the rest of her way. Is there no other stimulant that will do as well — as suitable, and more safe ? Ammonia, for example ? Experience says. No. Ammonia is wanted sometimes, besides. But we must have the alcohol, probably, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 47 among other reasons, because of the heat-producing power which it so mauilestly exercises by its oxidation, or burning in the lungs, and which, though in health apt to be injurious, as we shall more fully see, may in this extremity be at least expedient. Of course the beneficial effect will be most marked in those who, when in health, are least in the habit of taking alcohol in their ordinary beverages. In such persons each spoonful tells with a vigorous stroke on the virgin nervous centres; whereas, in the "seasoned" orgaifism much of the alcohol will be wasted in bringing up the nerves to their ordinary " par," and even then the stimulant effect cannot be expected to prove so suc- cessful. Slight touches of the whip are sufficient to keep the fresh horse up to his traces ; but the scourge must be laid heavily on the jaded hack, and withal there will be infinitely less power in the pull that follows. While water-drinking can never render people more susceptible of such disease, it is satisfactory to know, and important to remember, that it makes them much more impressed by the needed remedies when the dis- ease has come. And another point falls to be considered here. The law of tolerance. If disease render my system needful of a certain remedy, or class of remedies — however powerful they may be in themselves, or however nox- ious, even, under other circumstances — that disease will give my system, at the same time, the power of bearing that remedy, or class of remedies, with compara- tive impunity. I have inflammation of my lungs, and I 48 alcohol: ITS PLACE. take a grain of tartar-emetic, which affords me relief; and I may go on, taking grain after grain, every two hours or so, without feeling myself made sick, but, on the contrary, feeling myself made better. But if I have no inflammation of the lungs, and take that remedy in like dose, I shall be made very sick in the space of half an hour, or less; and if I attempt to persevere, the symptoms will become those of poisoning. Or I have lock-jaw; I am given a large dose of Indian hemp or " bang," and this is repeated frequently, with the effect of certainly palliating, and mayhap curing the cruel malady. But give me the same dose in health, and I shall probably be thrown into a trance, with restless tossings and troublous visions, awaking in terror and exhaustion; and were I to repeat the dosings as in tetanus, I should run great risk of perishing by nar- cotism. And so it is here. The necessity for the remedy engenders a power of bearing it ; and it seems at the same time to give a fixed and favorable bias to the working of the remedy. Without shock or fever, or other depressing agency at work on my nervous system, spoonful after spoonful, or glass after glass of the alco- holic stimulant, in constant and frequent succession, perhaps for days, would certainly pass the stimulant action and merge it in the sedative ; I should become intoxicated, and consequently exhausted — my nervous system grievously depressed. But in the trough of the fever such dosing goes on without one sign of drunken- ness; the brain, on the contrary, growing clearer and clearer in all its functions. Nay, it is even perhaps wrong to speak of wine and brandy, when judiciously ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 49 handled, having even a stimulant action in such circum- stances. They do not excite the brain above the normal standard ; they merely bring it up to the normal work- ing, counteracting the state of depression in which they found it sunk, and thus approaching the character of a true tonic. In order to do this accurately and tho- roughly, however, it is very plain that both a careful and skilful management of the remedy is required. Like other poisons, it is not to be rashly and empirically prescribed, or the dosing fixed by routine. The case must be suitable, the disease and the necessity for the remedy must be there; the dosing must be well ad- justed at starting, and its effects must be carefully watched, in order that it may be duly regulated ac- cordingly. III. There are some affections of the heart in which the organ acts with great feebleness ; the functions of life flag in consequence, the general circulation is insuf- ficient, and danger to life is apt to ensue. Now, alcohol is a stimulant to the heart and blood-vessels, as well as to the nervous system ; and from small occasional doses, as with the ordinary meals, medical experience has shown that in such cases decided benefit may be ob- tained. IV. Again, in these as well as in other cases, drop- sies are apt to occur ; and it becomes of importance to stimulate the kidneys, with a view of increasing the amount of their secretion; just as in a water-logged ship, the pumps have to be plied with increased energy. The crew as they labor thus are worked in gangs or relays, else exhaustion would paralyse their efforts. 4 50 alcohol: its place. Diuretics are the pumping crew in dropsies, and they, too, have to be worked in relays. After a time, a remedy, which at first was very powerful and satisfac- tory, loses its effect, and has to be changed ; this in its turn has to give way to a second, and so on. Now, alcohol is a diuretic — take gin as its most ordinary variety in such repute — and oftentimes it is found useful; not in doing the whole work continuously — not ordered to-day and gone on with day after day careless of effects, but taking its place in alternation with other remedies of the class. V. In the advanced stages of inflammation, more especially when affecting internal organs, and in some unhealthy or weak inflammations from the very begin- ning of their course, what is called the stimulant system of treatment is necessary. A condition of nervous de- pression sets in, resembling what qbtains in fever, as already noticed; and alcohol, in various doses and forms, not only does good, but is essential — carefully and skilfully regulated, however, as before. In this respect a great change has taken place of late years in medical practice. Doctors have ceased to be the San- grados they once were, partly from alteration of views as to therapeutics generally, and partly from change in the nature of disease itself. There has been a remark- able change from the old system of bleeding, purging, and starving in inflammatory affections ; and, as ordina- rily happens in such reactions, examples have not beer wanting of an excess of reforming zeal, carrying its pos- sessors into a dangerous extreme. The time is reached, no doubt, when there is less risk of such extremes thar ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 51 formerly ; the pendulum has lost its wide swing, and is oscillating, we are fain to believe, pretty steadily in the "juste milieu." But there are writers even now who advocate the remedial use of alcoholic stimulants, to such an extent as cannot fail to prove highly prejudi- cial to the minds and morals, as well as to the bodies, of their unhappy patients. Against such flagrant error we will not scruple to uplift our testimony; claiming for alcoholics a prominent and powerful place in the treatment of inflammatory disease, in certain stages, and of certain forms, but denouncing anything like a promiscuous use of them, and declaring any other than their most guarded and anxious employment to be both unscientific and unsafe. A diseased joint, or some ghastly sore, is pouring out its cupfuls of daily discharge, and hectic is steadily con- suming the patient. In such a case, we cannot exclude wine and malt liquors from our means of cure. A fierce unhealthy inflammation is spreading along a vein, or burrowing beneath the skin in erysipelas, and the man is laboring for his life in irritative fever. In such a case, the medical attendant well knows that the time for alcoholic stimulus, on account of nervous de- pression, is either already come or not far ofi"; and that were his hands tied up from this remedy, there would be but little hope for his patient.* *- There is a striking illustration of the law of tolerance here. If •will be afterwards stated that alcohol, taken unyiecessarily, has a ten. dency to produce unhealthy inflammations — that is, inflammations of a weak and bad type, running on rapidly into destructive suppu- rations, and even gangrene. But ichen this kind of inflammation has 62 alcohol: ITS PLACE. Or an operation has been performed, and in the sup- purative stage of the wound, whether from previous exhaustion, excessive discharge, or accidental loss of blood, what is called "sinking" threatens. This consti- tutes a crisis in which all means of stimulating the powers of life, and more especially the nervous function, must be employed with promptitude and boldness. And, in consequence, alcoholics, once more, may be brought into appropriate play. All this — and more than this — is true. These are but samples of the circumstances connected with inflam- mations in which alcohol is both a safe and powerful remedial agent. But against a general use of this in almost all inflammations, and in almost every stage of them, we protest with all the vehemence in our power. Another evil we would denounce. A patient is dying. An incurable disease is making its closing grasp on the vitals, or old age is slowly passing on into extinction — the flickering flame all but out. The case is manifestly hopeless ; health cannot be restored, and life cannot be prolonged beyond a few hours at most. Is this a case for alcholio stimulants ? Most certainly not. And yet the practitioner is apt to fall into the routine of practice; and simply because it is a state of " sinking," to admin- ister wine and brandy in the ordinary way. There is no need for either now : there will be no tolerance in the system; they will not stimulate and support; they will inebriate, and, besides clouding that part of life which ought most of all to be serene, will probably frustrate occurred, the medicinal use of alcohol then becomes both valuable and essential. ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 53 the professional intent, and, by producing reactive ex- haustion, accelerate the end. " Let me go home sober," was the touching ^expostulation of one so tried ; and she was right. VI. But to proceed. Suppose that colic has attacked a patient, or cramp in the stomach, or flatulent abdomi- nal distention, common experience suggests " a dram " as the cure. No doubt it may afford relief 3 and when nothing better can be obtained, by all means let it be had recourse to. But remember that there are other remedies at least equally good, and many far more ap- propriate. And, furthermore, when a man prescribes this for himself, let him be sure of his diagnosis. If the pain be that of cramp, or a colic, or a flatulency, good and well, the "dram^^ may do no great harm; if it be not, however, but, on the contrary, the sign of an acute inflammation already set in (as it may be), the " dram '' will not only fail to relieve, but must inevitably do harm, acting as fuel to fire. And, moreover, let him beware of magnifying some trumpery uneasiness into such a state of things as to warrant alcoholics. A man fond of the latter, on any plea, may, almost unknown to himself, be too easily persuaded that a physical necessity has arisen for their use — a failing this from which even the lower animals would not seem to be altogether exempt. In a home-park a pensioned pony was leisurely spending the evening of his days, under the kind care of his master's widow. One day she was alarmed by seeing the poor beast rolling on the ground, evidently in pain. The groom was summoned ; his diagnosis was prompt — colic; and his prescription consisted of a 64 alcohol: its place. couple of bottles of mulled ale, vliicli the pony drank readily, and with obvious relief In a day or two, how- ever, the attack recurred, and the dose had to be re- peated. In a few days more there was another relapse, when the same remedy sufficed for cure. But after a time, the rollings and kickings having become matters of daily occurrence, and always in front of the drawing- room windows, suspicion arose as to their truthfulness ; and a little watching convicted the poor pony, like many another pensioner, of shamming the disease for the sake of the cure. The ale was accordingly withheld, and the colic did not return. VII. Exhaustion may affect the frame from sudden causes — such as great bodily effort, or intense mental emotion, or exposure to extreme cold. In these circum- stances, it may be necessary to make use of alcohol as a stimulant of the nervous and circulating systems, perhaps with other remedies ; all the more, if the patient be under the necessity — real or supposed — of remaining exposed to the depressing cause, for such a time and to such an extent as his unaided powers obviously could not suffice to meet. VIII. But, besides these acute cases of physical and mental exhaustion from overwork or other cause, there are chronic cases, equally important, and far more com- mon. The clerk, the shopman, the sewing girl, the factory worker, the merchant, the minister, the teacher, the student, the statesman — every laborer by hand and head is, in these days of rivalry and competition, prone to overwork. He sets himself to a daily task beyond what his natural powers can overtake without help j and ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 55 when they either fail to do the task, or accomplish it only at the price of thorough exhaustion, he bethinks himself of a remedy. Obviously, were he to take time to deliberate, he would find two alternatives awaiting his decision : either to diminish the amount of work, or to retain that, and seek to increase the working power by artificial means. In general, however, he sees but the latter , in his haste he adopts it ', and as day by day he works on, attaining his object, if not with ease, at least without absolute prostration as before, he looks to the wine or brandy bottle as the best of auxiliaries and the truest of all friends. He commits a sad blunder, how- ever — often a fatal one. Such nervous stimulation will seem to answer well enough on an occasion. "When no actual increase of vital strength is to be had — by food and rest — a spur to insure the using up of the last resi- duum may suffice for once, in a way; but necessarily all the more time will be afterwards required to recover thoroughly from the consequent exhaustion. And when such shift or substitution is not occasional but constant, — and when, moreover, there is no sufficient correspond- ence in the amount of compensating rest — the working organism must soon come to be altogether in a most arti- ficial and unsafe condition. It will resemble an over- tasked mercantile house, supported on bills and other means of " accommodation f' the work is done at a great cost ; and at any time, by failure of the artificial support on the one hand (even for a day), or by a sudden in- crease of outward pressure on the other, the whole con- cern may fall to pieces ; either stopping altogether, or dragging out a crushed existence in insolvency. 56 alcohol: ITS place. If the man will work on under his burden, it is vital strength that he must have increased, to meet and sus- tain the increased labor. Let him get that, if he can, by the suitable means ; and certainly alcohol is not one of them. But if he cannot, then let him, like a wise man, accept the only remaining safe alternative — dimi- nution in the amount of labor. Alcohol gives no addi- tion to the amount of vital strength ; it merely urges the more rapid and thorough using up of what you already have. That may do well enough, as has been said, for an occasional paroxysm of work; but its continuance would only consume all the sooner the scanty existing store. Excessive work, sustained on natural power, will exhaust and lead to a fall ; but the fall is not formidable — it is not from a great height — the system is still elastic, and will recover itself after a while. But excessive work on alcoholic stimulus, while it may postpone the fall, renders that far more serious when it comes — from a greater height, with greater impetus, and more likely to produce a fatal injury. IX. We have seen that the alcoholic stimulants are of service when the system labors under nervous depres- sion, in consequence of active disease — such as fever, or unhealthy inflammations. They may also prove bene- ficial in cases of chronic general debility, early super vening on the frame, and settling down on it with a firm hold for life — or sometimes seeming to be born into the world as part and parcel of the patient. In these cases it may be found difficult to get a sufficient quantity of food taken and digested, so as to nourish the body suit- ably, and enable it to meet even a small amount of work, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 57 without an artificial stimulation both of the coats of the stomach and of the nervous system : and therefor^, along with other suitable remedies, the use of small quantities of wine, or other alcoholic stimulant, from time to time, may under such circumstances be not only legitimate but expedient. X. There is another class of cases, somewhat resem- bling the preceding, but with this important difierence : the condition is not congenital, but acquired, and of comparatively recent origin — the result of other disease, or of excessive labor either of body or mind. Here the alcoholic stimulus is appropriate only for a brief period, so as to keep the patient temporarily afloat, and enable him to overtake some special object in view. The right treatment is to abandon labor, and take rest, with other suitable means for renewing the vital strength, as has already been stated. It may be well to correct here an important error, yet very current, in regard to the medicinal use of alcohol. People regard it as a simple and common tonic; and are ready to accept its supposed help as such, in every form of weakness and general disorder of health. But it is ordinarily no true tonic. In its primary effect it is merely a stimulant, as has been stated, with narcotic reaction when in large doses. And in its secondary action it is the reverse of tonic. For while iron, for example, enters the blood and acts beneficially thereon, alcohol entering the blood acts injuriously — so inju- riously, that even its advocates admit, as we have seen, that were it constantly present the result would be fatal. Alcohol, as a medicine, is very valuable ; but not as a 58 alcohol: ITS PLACE. true tonic. As formerly stated (page 49), it only ap- proaches that character in cases of morbid and extreme nervous depression. Then, and then only, can it be pushed with safety. Then its continued presence in the blood is not only not injurious, but positively beneficial, by virtue of the law of tolerance. This is a striking example, indeed, of the truth, that many dosihgs and drugs which tend to kill in health, tend to cure and keep alive in that special form of disease which we know by experience demands their use. Keep alcohol con- stantly in the blood, during health, and " the result may be fatal." Keep alcohol constantly in the blood, for a time, during typhus fever, or shock, and it will show once more a just claim to its old designation — "Aqua vitse." Let it not be used, then, as an ordinary tonic ; and, at the same time, let not the mistakes of those who do so misapply it detract from its reputation in those circum- stances to which its use is really applicable. I might greatly prolong the consideration of this subject; but enough has surely been said to show what an important place alcohol holds in the materia medica. It is, in truth, a medicinal agent of great power and value J never to be lightly prescribed, and always to be carefully watched and regulated in its administration. Sundry simple rules apply to its use : — 1. Make sure that the case is suitable. There is no more fatal error than error in diagnosis : it is " taking in a wrong figure at the very start of the calculation ; " no wonder if the final summation should bo ruinously false. -^2. Remem- ber the law of tolerance, and its converse. If diagnosis is right, the agent will do good and no harm; if, on the ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 59 contrary, the diagnosis is wrong, the agent will do harm and no good. In other words, if there be no medical necessity for alcoholic drinks, their use even in small quantity must fail to benefit, and must injure more or less. On the one hand, if there be a necessity for alcoholics, don't be afraid to give them, for the system will bear them well so long as that necessity exists ; on the other hand, if there be no such necessity, be afraid to give them, even in small quantity, for the system cannot then receive them with impunity. Such is the double play of the law of tolerance. No doubt, you find . men apparently in good health who take daily so many glasses of wine, or their equivalent in spirits or malt liquors, and who nevertheless seem none the worse. But to this the answer is twofold: First, the absence of evil in effect may be only a " seeming." There may be a gradual and insidious evil at work, though unob- served^ much as the malaria does not at the first seem hurtful, yet is gradually accumulating its power within till it burst out in the formidable fever.* Second, the goodness of health may be but a " seeming." May not ) the unnecessary use of alcoholics have engendered a diseased state of the system, which requires a continu- ance of the alcoholics to counteract it ? Much as in the case of the smoker of tobacco or opium : — in perfect health, the drug would sicken or stupify him; but being 1 * The famous Alexis St. Martin's stomach, it will be remembered, had a window; and, looking through that, one could often note iuflaming patches on the mucous coat, the result of alcoholic in- dulgence, though Alexis felt no headache, thirst, fever, or other inconvenience. 60 alcohol: its place. in a diseased state — in consequence of the drug's pre- vious consumption when not required — the smoking seems rather beneficial than otherwise. In other words, and in plainer language, the man apparently in health who takes alcoholics habitually with seeming impunity — nay, with a feeling of benefit, as well as of relish — is probably in the same state, though of a minor degree, as the confirmed tippler or drunkard, who has depressed and shaken his nervous system by excessive indulgence in alcoholics, and who needs must have his alcoholics again to raise his nervous system out of such depression — temporary and deceitful though such raising be. The difierence between the two men is in degree only, not in kind. In both there is a depression produced and a stimulus given, and the agent of depression and of stimulation is one and the same. — 3. Eemember in suit- able cases the medicinal mode of administration. The alcohol is not given in such dose as to produce its second or sedative effect — that is truly poisonous. Its first or stimulant action is wanted; and, to secure that, the doses must be small ; their repetition being in every case regu- lated by the effect. — 4. Supposing the diagnosis and administration right, remember there is a time to cease from its use. This is most important, yet too often overlooked. Suppose a medical man to order blue-pill once or twice a day, and, overlooking its effects, to forget to stop it at the proper time. Perhaps the first intima- tion of his error would be the discovery of intense salivation, with loose teeth, swollen gums, and ulcerated tongue, in his unfortunate patient — his constitution mayhap hurt irretrievably. Or he orders lead, and ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 61 forgets that he has done so, till the man is struck with a colic or a palsy. Such mistakes are very rarely made — just because their detection were easy. But a pre- cisely similar mistake is far from rare. Alcoholics are ordered, rightly or wrongly; the effects are not watched; their use is not stopped at the proper time ; and the first intimation of the blunder may be the painful discovery that the man has become a drunkard. I would not be uncharitable to my professional brethren ; but I would entreat them to consider this matter well — satisfied as I am that many a case of hopeless intemperance, especially among the better classes, owes its origin to ill-regulated medical administration. Or the evil may fall short of this; and, in illustration, take another case. Suppose a medical man to order opium, to relieve pain or procure sleep, in needful and urgent circumstances; and that he neglects either to regulate its dose, or to order its discontinuance when the necessity for its use has ceased. The convalescent, improperly left to himself, finds, first, that he must in- crease the dose to attain the ordinary effect; and, se- condly, that after a time he can ill do without it. Ere ever he is aware, he becomes an opium-eater — the victim of an infirmity most difficult of cure. And so with the alcohol. Left without due control, the dose is increased, and the habit becomes confirmed ; the system refuses to part willingly with its use ; and the man, besides being brought into a morbid state of bodily frame, is in ex- treme moral danger of intemperance. 62 alcohol: ITS PLACE. ALCOHOL AS FOOD. Here is the fundamental and fatal error : men esteem- ing that to be food, and using it as such, which is really not food, but physic. Food, properly so called, is that which enters the stomach, and is thence absorbed into the general circu- lation, with the double object of nourishing the body and maintaining its due temperature. Such food meets with a solvent in the natural secretions of the stomach, and of other organs connected with the chyle-making apparatus — such as the salivary glands, the liver, the pancreas; and, besides, a solvent is needful also from without — holding the food in solution at the time of being taken, or swallowed along with it, or after it, in sips or draughts. Now, can alcohol be duly entered here as food, or solvent for food ? Not as the latter, cer- tainly. It refuses to act along with the gastric juice. "It is a remarkable fact," says Dr. Dundas Thomson, "'that alcohol, when added to the digestive fluid, pro- duces a white precipitate, so that the fluid is no longer capable of digesting animal or vegetable matter." " The use of alcoholic stimulants," say Todd and Bowman, " retards digestion by coagulating the pepsin (an essen- tial element of the gastric juice), and thereby interfering with its action. Were it not that wine and spirits are rapidly absorbed, the introduction of these into the stomach in any quantity would be a compkte bar to the digestion of the food, as the pepsin would be precipi- tated from solution as quickly as it was formed by the stomach." ALCOHOL AS FOOD. 63 In the laboratory of the pharmaceutist, alcohol is very valuable as a solvent; it holds many things in admirable solution, and many a good tincture it makes. But in the living stomach of man — which ought to be no drug- shop — alcohol tends to harden and coagulate, rather than to soften and dissolve. ^^ It is through the mediuni of the water contained in the animal body," says Carpen- ter, " that all its vital functions are carried on. No other liquid than water can act as a solvent for the various articles of food which are taken into the stomach." Water dissolves them there; water carries them into the blood, and through the frame ; and water helps to work them off again when useless. Indeed, water seems to have a very remarkable power in depuration of the system from the noxious presence of effete material — more especially when taken beyond the limits of what mere slaking of thirst requires. And on this water- power J no doubt, much of the success of " the water- cure" depends. But if alcohol be no solvent of food, is it food itself? Let us see. Can it nourish or repair the waste of tis- sue? Not at all. It contains no sufficient chemical constitution for that end ; and besides, as we have seen, it is conveyed uncTiatiged, into the blood, and so circu- lates there until either disposed of by combustion in the lungs, or removed (more or less modified then) by the organs of excretion. Does it help to maintain due temperature ? It is only too ready to do so. It is very forward to be burnt in the lungs. But is its action there desirable? The mixed ordinary food of man (as beef, bread, and vege- 64 alcohol: its place. tables) which nourishes his body — doing specially and well what alcohol cannot do at all — contains not only the peculiar materials for nutrition, but more or less of fat or oilj and sugar, or matter convertible into sugar. Now these (especially the oil) are very suitable for oxi- dation by the lungs, — hence often termed "respiratory food ; " and their peculiar function seems to be the un- dergoing of that process, with a view to maintain tem- perature, in so far as such maintenance may be neces- sary, in addition to what is done by oxidation of the waste material returning in the venous blood, as formerly stated (page 17). In other words, the natural arrange- ment as to maintaining temperature seems to be as fol- lows : — Probably every act of nutrition and every act of disintegration of tissue — the passing of fluids into a solid, and of solids into a fluid condition — is attended with more or less production of heat (page 20) ; a spe- cial supply of spare oxygen being provided for that purpose. Besides, the disintegrated and waste mate- rial* in the venous blood is burned off, combining directly with oxygen taken into the lungs. And any further combustion which may be necessary for com- pleting the efiiciency of the warming apparatus, is effected by means of the oil and sugar, more especially the former, with ordinary food supplies. Now, it is ascertained that in ordinary food, received in even moderate quantity, there is not only enough of these * It is supposed, as formerly stated (page 34), that the waste material is, in its venous transit to the lungs, converted into a fatty substance, probably by the action of the liver, for the purpose of readily undergoing this combustion. ALCOHOL AS TOO 1). bO combustible materials to insure sufficient temperature, but more than enough — the superfluity being stored up, as it were, in the ordinary fatty tissue throughout the body, to meet accidental scantiness of supply, through long fasts or famine. Suppose, now, that alcohol is taken in any conside- rable quantity, along with the ordinary supply of food. It gets speedily into the blood, and into the lungs. There it has a greater appetite for oxygen than any of the other combustible materials we have mentioned, and accordingly is burned off first. The temperature may be maintained in this way, no doubt. But what hap- pens in consequence of the temperature being thus maintained ? Two things ; or one of two things, at the least: — The oil and sugar are not burnt off suffi- ciently, and these materials accumulate unduly in the body; or the waste material of the blood is not burnt off sufficiently, and this accumulates unduly in the body — poisoning the blood, and producing the serious conse- quences formerly spoken of; or both of these results may occur — as we believe most frequently is the case. And a third evil is also possible : The " spare oxygen," as we have termed it — intended to circulate with the blood to the remotest parts of the system, and to act an important part during both the waste of tissue and its repair, so generating heat — may also be seriously en- croached upon ; so great and greedy is the appetite of alcohol for this substance. The obvious deduction is surely this : that when man receives a fair average supply of food, he obtains at least enough of combustible material thereby; and that when 5 66 ALCOHOL: ITS PLACE. alcoliol is taken in addition, it is unnecessary; tlie act is a work of pure supererogation — so far as warmtli-giving intra-combustion is concerned. And further, the alcoliol so taken is not only unnecessary, it is also hurtful, by preventing certain changes in the constituents of the blood, the occurrence of which is essential to health. Alcohol, in short, is in such circumstances not only un- necessary but injurious. It is not food; but a chemical or medicinal agent, which, when ordinary food is absent or greatly defective, or when the emergency is such that there is no time to wait for the digestion of food, may be employed as a substitute, so far as the maintenance of temperature is concerned. Or, once more to turn the phrase, alcohol's place is not among the articles of food proper, and it ought neither to he classed among these, nor used along with them. Its only pretension to be regarded as food is founded on its combustibility in the lungs, so gendering warmth ; and every man who has enough, or nearly enough, of ordinary food, has no need of any such thing ; it can do no good in this way, and must do harm in other ways. To him only is it allowable — as a combustible — who is suffering both cold and fasting — who, during extreme cold, has either no proper food to eat, or no time to wait for its heat-giving operation, subsequent to leisurely digestion. He may use it rationally; but, as he does so, let him remember that it has other properties besides those of a combustible, and that it is safe only for the emergency. To continue its use, as a substitute for food, is to court, or rather secure the invasion of those serious evils, which, in a previous chapter, we have ALCOHOL AS FOOD. 67 seen attendant on tlie free and habitual use of tliis powerful agent. There has been a good deal of quibbling about the words "force" and "food." The alcoholists, having a shrewd suspicion that they cannot successfully establish their client's claim to rank as food, in the true and common sense of the term, insist greatly on its being at least " force ;" and that if this be not actually the same as food, it is at least its equivalent. But what is force ? "All experience proves," says Liebig, " that there is in the organism only one source of mechanical power ; and this is the conversion of living tissue into lifeless amor- phous compounds." The crumbling down of living solids into what at the time is little better than mere dead matter, is the source of the power whereby every living act is performed, whether of muscle or nerve. The generation of this pulp out of living solids seems to be the source of the power of the human mechanism, somewhat as the generation of "steam" out of water and coke is the source of the power of a steam-engine. "Now," say they, "if a man takes alcohol, this ^ force' is generated more copiously, and the machinery works with greater velocity and power." Yes. But how ? and for how long? How? The alcohol does not act by contributing any living tissue to crumble, or by pro- viding aay substitute for it; but by causing merely a more rapid and continued crumbling of what is already there ; compelling you to burn your coke and water faster than you were doing, and probably faster than you ought to do — so making more steam; but giving you no addi- 68 alcohol: ITS I'LACE. tion to your coke and water, or providing any substitute to make steam of. So much for the " how V And as for the " how long ?" It is plain that if the settlement of this be left to the alcohol alone, the mechanism will soon be silent. The continuance of work for any con- siderable time, under such circumstances, will depend upon the activity with which food is supplied — ^nourish- ing food — so as to atone, if possible, for the increased coDSumption of the organism. The man working under alcoholic stimulus, therefore, ought to take more food, and digest it thoroughly too, than when working without such stimulus. Yet what is the fact ? He takes less. And the inevitable consequence must be exhaustion — premature and in excess. Alcohol is not "force" itself, but only the excitant of " force ;" and its invariable effect is, while producing an increased expenditure of ^' force" for a time, to bring the supply of that force to an un- timely close. On a railway, it may be quite possible so to hurry power and speed as to make a show of increased traffic ; but if the upshot be to consume " the rolling stock" at a double rate, without doing anything to maintain "the plant," this will be found an expensive mode of managing the line — and withal not very safe. Our opponents plume themselves greatly on the fact that the working-man takes less food with the alcohol than without it, and seek to make argumentative capital thereof; inferring this to be a proof that the alcohol taken is a substitute and equivalent for the portion of food which is not taken, and which would otherwise have been consumed. " Thus," they say, " alcohol may be useful to the poor man in an economical sense, and ALCOHOL AS FOOD. 69 to the dyspeptic man by saving heavy meals." But this is a mere assumption. And no reasonable man can doubt that the explanation is quite diiFerent from their statement of it. Habitual use of alcohol, even in " moderation," diminishes the appetite, as we have seen, by exciting a direct and unfavorable action upon the stomach.* The man, in virtue of this morbid condition, comes to have a less craving for and a less power of digesting food.j* Therefore he takes less. And the portion of food which he does not take, and otherwise would have taken, is simply lost to his system by the alcohol. This, moreover, has kept waste old material circulating in the blood ; and that is offered to the system for nourishment in a fatty and fusted form. There will be no vigorous appetite for fresh food, till that waste ma- terial is used up and got rid of somehow — while, mean- time, every successive dose of alcohol prevents the dis- appearance of this obstructive waste by appropriating the oxj^gen instead. And the question comes to be — Whether shall we take alcohol, eat less, and be imper- fectly nourished ; or take no alcohol, eat more, and be nourished well ? Whether shall we thrive better on a small quantity of new nutritive material, with a great * " I cannot eat but little meat, My stomach is not good; But sure I think that I can drink With him who wears a hood." f " I love no rost, but a nut-broun toste, And a crab laid on the fire; A little bread shall do my stead — Much bread I nought desire." 70 alcohol: ITSPLACE. deal of what is old and mouldy; or on a constant and fresh supply of new material, in sufficient abundance to dispense with the old — which, being then in all respects useless, is extruded from the system ? Even one less qualified than a " licensed victualler " should have no difficulty in giving the right answer — " The fresh article, if you please ; and plenty of it." Adopting the tactics of the alcoholists, we could make out almost as good a case for tartar emetic as for alcohol. A patient at one time had much too good an appetite, to his thinking ; he was getting stout and pursy ; and by no ordinary means could he keep the demands of his clamorous stomach within reasonable bounds. At last a happy idea struck him. He would have recourse to physic, so as to produce slight sickness — a morbid con- dition ; and, accordingly, a small dose of tartar emetic was taken, a short time before every meal. This suc- ceeded admirably ; the appetite lessened ; the " too solid flesh" began to melt; and the patient was quite satisfied. Now, this tartar emetic, in one sense, took the place of food ; therefore was a substitute for food ; therefore was equivalent to food; and therefore was food. " Quod erat demonstrandum ;" and also "Quod est absurdum." That plea will not hold good, then. But they have many shifts; and, once again, they put it in this form. " See how little ordinary food the drunkard subsists on. Try you to live on it without the alcohol, and you will die of starvation in a month." Now, even were we to admit the fact — which we do not — the inference is ob- viously fallacious. It is true that you or I, as healthy men, could not live as we ought on such a small allow- ALCOHOL AS POOD. 71 ance of food ; but, keeping away the '^ alcoholismus " (page 30), reduce us to the same miserable condition of body as the poor drunkard has — little better than a vital zero — and then the same wretched life — if life it may be called — could be managed by either of us, fully as well without as with the alcohol. This puts me in mind of still another subterfuge. "All respiratory materials — fit for pulmonary combus- tion — are really food/' say they, " and should be con- sidered as such ; and alcohol, all must admit, has pecu- liar claims in that way; therefore it is food." To that we answer by proposing a simple experiment, in return for their courteous invitation to make trial on our part of the drunkard's pittance. Try you to live on " respi- ratory materials " absolutely alone, and you will be for- tunate if the issue be not — as invariably happens to animals so experimented upon — death within a few weeks, in utmost bodily misery. Alcohol, then, has no title whatever to be regarded as food, in reference to nutrition, or the repairing of tissue. Its claim to be considered food, as an ordinari/ agent for maintaining temperature by intra-combustion, is founded on no just or sufficient grounds, and is in fuct untenable. And its title to rank as vital "force" rests only on a fallacy. May it aspire to a humbler position, as an accessory to food, or condiment — such as salt, pepper, or mustard ? Salt is a natural constituent of ordinary food; and when, from circumstances, its amount is defective, both men and animals are led by a natural instinct and craving to supply the defect from other sources. Be- 72 alcohol: its place. sides, it is present in all the fluids, and almost all the solids, of the healthy body. Nothing of this is true as regards alcohol. Pepper and mustard are pure stimulants ; and, mixed with food, may be medicinally carminative. Whether taken in large or small doses, occasional or habitual, — and no doubt they are often used most unnecessarily, — they are not found circulating in the blood, specifically affecting the brain, or exhibiting any such poisonqus results on the general system as we have seen to be characteristic of alcohol. Taken to excess in large dose, the stomach relieves itself by vomiting. Taken in small quantities, yet unduly, the stomach loses natural tone, by becoming habitually dependent on the extrinsic stimulus. In this latter respect there is similarity between alco- hol and these ordinary condiments. Being a direct stimulus to the stomach, it may, as such, temporarily aid digestion; and as such it may be used in small quantity to help the stomach in an emergency. But used even thus, it is liable to the same objection as is the constant and indiscriminate use of these others — atony of the stomach, to a greater or less extent, and disorder of health following thereon. If you habitually give an organ assistance, it will come to trust to that assistance — do half its proper work, and get lazy. Nay, it will get weak. Give a limb the help of a splint or crutch, day by day, and for many days, and the muscles will grow small, soft, and flabby. Cramp and case a healthy human trunk in steel stays, and you must in^ evitably prod uce debility, probal ly with distortion. ALCOHOL AS FOOD. 73 Besides, remember the all-important fact, that alcohol in its action never can be limited to the stomach alone; but, being invariably absorbed into the blood, must affect the general system. Herein lies the vast difference between it and the common condiments. And if any place be accorded to it in this category, sensible men will mark it thus : "Alcohol, a condiment, in small occasional doses ; ordi- narily unsuitable, generally unnecessary, and always un- manageable and unsafe." " What ! is a glass of brandy not essential after sal- mon ?" No, sir. If you have eaten salmon to such an extent as to require brandy, it is a sign that you have eaten too much salmon; and if, in consequence, a remedy is necessary, you have selected the wrong one. Dip your hand again into the bag of the materia medica, and if an emetic should turn up, you will find it infinitely more appropriate. To one article, often used as a condiment, I confess that alcohol has to my mind some resemblance — horse- radish. Many a man eats this with his beef, and thinks he is the better for it ; certainly he seems to suffer not at all. But ever and anon there flashes out a sad cala- mity of some hapless eater poisoned, through aconite having been taken in mistake. And so there is many a man who takes his dram with salmon and with cheese, day by day, scarcely seeming to suffer thereby; whilst others, by like practice, commit a mistake, and come to fatal poisoning. But there is this sad difference : in the one case, the poisoning is rare and exceptional ; in the 74 alcohol: ITS PLACE. other, the fatal cases are counted by thousands and tens of thousands. ^ " What !" say the alcoholists, " will you stop us from shaving, because a man now and then cuts his throat ? " No. But if it so happen that one out of every four or five men who imitate your example is led ilierehy to cut his throat — some maimed and mutilated for life, some suicides — then surely common humanity should persuade you to throw away the razor in disgust, and identify yourself with the beard movement. Let us take one other view of the " Food " question, before leaving it. A tree is known by its fruits. Food is estimated by its results. A man or animal, subsisting on convenient food, will prosper on it, more or less. How fares it witli the man that lives on alcohol ? There are some — alas ! far too many — who, with much truth, may be said al- most to do so. Like Falstaff, they have but a morsel of bread to their much sack. Nay, they pride them- selves on being " small eaters ;" honestly adding, how- ever, that they " take a good deal of drink ; " and then perhaps setting up a plea for this latter questionable virtue being in their case somewhat of a necessity. Some such there are, who live thus by choice ; others are driven to it, in a sense, by reason of insufficient food — "their poverty, and not their will, consenting'' to this sad substitute. The case of the latter is pitiable, and not without excuse; but in all the result is the same. It is as follows, as has been in part stated already, when considering the signs of general poisoning (p. 35). ALCOHOL AS FOOD. 75 Be lie beer-drinker, wine-drinker, or dram-drinker, who lives thus snipe-like by suction, the evidence of the feeding power of his diet stands thus. Besides the diseases of the various organs, already spoken of, mani- festing themselves by their ordinary signs, the process of general nutrition is obviously out of joint. The skin is discolored and diseased, and hangs loose and flabby on the parts beneath. These are soft and doughy; and there is an excess of water in the cellular tissue, giving a dropsical appearance. Where there should be mus- cular firmness and rotundity, there is thinness and misery of limb ; where fineness and sharpness of outline, there is heavy and misshapen pulp. The eye is glassy and unspeculative ; the tongue is foul, and not so glib as was its wont; the breath is fetid, and noisome eructations with filthiness of spit are ever and anon emerging. The hands are hot and tremulous ; the limbs, too, shake, and feebly totter as they go. The clothes hang loose upon the skeleton, as this daily becomes more and more appa- rent; the cheekbones stare, the cheeks themselves fall in ; and the merest child may tell that the whole man, mental and corporeal, is starving. "Come away!" said a late Lord of Session, to a lean, tall, sallow, withered Writer to the Signet, who entered the Parliament House eating a dry split haddock, or speldron — " Come away, Mr. ! I am glad to see you looking so like your meat." This was a mere joke on the part of the learned lord. But in the case of the man we speak of, -such a phrase would be full of sad truth. He does indeed look like his "meat" — unsubstantial, unstable, unwholesome ; his life " even as a vapor vanishing away." 76 alcohol: ITS PLACE. Or if he be young, and mainly live (?) on malt, there may be an apparent nutrition and growth. He may grow fat ', but the fat is not that which in an ox a flesher would call "prime." It is soft, thin, and ill-colored. Ill placed it is too ; collecting where no fat should be ; putting the outer man all out of drawing, and squeezing some of the internal organs most inconveniently; his voice is changed, his breath is short and wheezing, and his heart is laboring. Rapidly this fat, both out and in, has accumulated, like snow by the wayside ; and as rapidly it may thaw and drip away, leaving as a residue the most gaunt and grisly form of humanity. There are fat and lean kine, then, produced on this pasturage; but they are all "ill-favored." Sometimes there is, as it were, a crossing of the breed, and the two conditions are somewhat mixed up — in every case, how- ever, expressing the unnatural and diseased, and usually betokening a rapid onset of premature old age, as has been well expressed by the great dramatist, " a marvel- lous observer of men and manners." " Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth that are written down old, with all the characters of age ? Have you not a moist eye, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you bloated with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young ? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John." In many a case there is another fatness — unseen, but all the more dangerous. The alcohol preventing the burning off of the fat taken as food, as well as of that which circulates in the blood, as part of the waste mate- ALCOHOL AS FOOD. 77 rial of the frame, causes accumulatiou of this somewhere as we have seen (page 35), and experieiice shows that it is prone not only to be put down on tissue, but to be put down in and to take the place of tissue. The heart, for example, is liable not only to be loaded with fat, but to be in part converted into fat ; and the whole arterial tissue is exposed to the same degeneracy. The liver, and kidneys, too, are not exempt. And so the man be- comes constitutionally undermined, ere ever he be aware ; not only rendered incurably diseased, but liable to sudden death from very slight cause. The insurance offices know this well ; and either reject the habitual soaker, summarily, or exact such an additional premium as vir- tually amounts to refusal of the policy. Moreover, the fatty degeneracy of the structure may be so extensive, and the soaking of the entire frame in unchanged alcohol so thorough, as to render the man dangerously prone to a most lamentable consummation, from a common outward cause — his alcohol proving an "aptitude for combustion" in a way he little dreamt of. Falling asleep near a fire or candle, a spark lights upon him ; and having become as it were a compound of an oil or spirit lamp — with a dash of phosphorus to boot (page 19) — he burns with a strange burning : producing little flame or heat, but steadily consuming away, in horrid stench, leaving but a small residue of dark, offen- sive, unctuous dross to mark the place where he lay.* * Examples of this fearful ending are by no means very rare. The term of " spontaneous combustion " is a misnomer, only so far as im- plying that the incremation is of spontaneous origin. Authentic 78 alcohol: ITS PLACE. Sometimes these serious evils are long protracted, even in hard and habitual drinkers, who for a time may actually seem of specially robust health. But all is de- ceitful. Take the stout, burly, red-faced, brewers' dray- man, for example — who is daily consuming his horns of ale or porter, with his modicum of spirits to make them "light"-:— and let any disease or accident befall him. This will at once shiver the outward crust of health and strength to atoms. The man can neither bear disease, nor the remedies for disease ; the surgeon and physician stand all but helpless at the bed of such a patient } and a scratch or common ail, by which a temperate or absti- nent man would not be held for a day, may fatally sweep away this other within a few days, or even hours. What would prove but a simple healthy inflammation in the temperate, degenerates in the intemperate into an un- healthy kind, prone to pass into gangrene. Four cases of mortification of the lungs are narrated by Dr. Stokes — and all in drunkards. Such are some of the doings of alcohol in the way of nourishing. Looking to the results, we may well say. If this be food, it is manifestly of a very perverse kind — most unwholesome. And those who vend it might, not unreasonably, be dealt with by the civic and legal autho- rities, as nefariously trading in "diseased meat" — fined and interdicted, with confiscation of all the noxious stuff found on the premises. cases will be found detailed by Dr. Charles Wilson, in his *•' Pathology of Drunkenness, page 92, et aeq. ALCOHOLASALUXURY. 79 ALCOHOL AS A LUXURY. In arguing against the habitual use of strong drinks, I have often been met with an objection to this effect: '' I do not admit that alcohol has its proper place in the materia medica, as you allege — nor yet do I seek to place it among the articles of food; but I regard it as a luxury^ and use it as such." Let us consider it in this view. What is a luxury ? Sundry meanings are attached to the word in the various lexicons. The following, if not the most appropriate, are certainly the most favorable to the promoters of such a plea : " That which gratifies a nice and fastidious appetite; a dainty; any delicious food or drink; or anything delightful to the senses." The literal meaning of the word, when used in contra- distinction to food, will come out by regard to its deri- vation — luOy luxoj hixus, luxuria. Alcohol, then, we will have to consider as separate from food, and taken in addition to it — as a " dainty," or something " delightful to the senses." Whence is it taken ? From what has gone before, we need have no difficulty in answering. From the ma- teria medica. It is something transferred from the category of drugs into that of food, because in its effects it is pleasant or " delightful to the senses." " In its effects," we say ; for, as regards itself, " the dainti- ness," and '^ deliciousness," and "gratifjdng of appetite," are generally acquired. Now it so happens that the ingenuity of man has transferred other things in like manner; and these pro- 80 alcohol: its place. mise to be of use in helping us to test the rightfulness of transfer in the present instance. The substances to which I allude are tobacco and opium, belonging to the same class of medicines with alcohol — namely, the narcotics. Tobacco is one of the most powerful of poisons ; and is not without its value — like many others of the same class — as an article of medicine too. Give it, even in small dose, to a child, or to one of any age unaccustomed to its use, and its taste will be found unpleasant, while the eflfects will be nauseous and disgusting. But habit brings a change in these respects. After a time of longer or shorter probation, and after perhaps no little sickness and distress in the course of it, the recipient of the tobacco — whether it be in fume, or powder, or solid mass — comes to find a strange pleasure and fasci- nation in its use. And many a man, and woman too — nay, even many a stripling — would almost as soon want their daily meal, as their accustomed cigar or pipe. They will not call it "food:" it is something "after meat;" and they call it "luxury." Sometimes, too, they will tell you that when food cannot be got, it forms no indifierent substitute, tending to keep them " warm and comfortable." Now, what are the consequences of this acquired habit ? Plainly three, at least, may be enumerated : I. Harm, more or less, is done to the individual. The theory of the law of tolerance, already alluded to, shows that; and the proof may readily be completed by ad- ducing the result of experiehce. In confirmed and ex- cessive smokers, for instance, the tongue soon shows signs ALCOHOL AS A LUXURY. 81 of disorder in tlie general lining of the alimentary canal; the drain on the saliva — run to waste — causes thirst; and the stomach gives plain token of an impaired diges- tion. The hand shakes ; there is a peculiar expression of the eye; the heart palpitates; and the entire ner- vous system is evidently impaired in tone. This is bad enough ; but worse may follow. Local diseases, of the most serious kind, may attack the mouth; and one or both limbs may become more or less completely para- lysed.* No absolutely healthy man daily consumes tobacco, in any form, or in any considerable quantity. If he seem to bear it with impunity, it is simply because, by pre- vious use of the drug, he has induced a perverted or morbid state of system, to which further continuance of the drug's use brings at least a temporary relief (page 59). II. The man becomes a slave. For a time he has gone on swimmingly with his "weed." But, by-and- by, he thinks to leave it off, on account of its expense, perhaps, or its inconvenience, or a sense of mischief done. But he finds it easier to acquire than to aban- don — to take up than to lay down. There are two at *• There has been much controversy of late as to the effects of tobacco on the human body ; and, no doubt, extreme statements have been made on both sides. In the present brief sketch, I state only what I have repeatedly seen, and am sure of. Dr. Marshall ll;ill — a very high authority on such a subject — has recorded his experience and opinion as follows : " It is plain that tobacco acts on the cerebrum, the medulla oblongata, and the heart : its effects are stupidity, defective breathing, defective action of the heart — forms of debility and impaired energy." 6 82 alcohol: its place. the bargain-making in either case ^ but at the beginning and the end their respective positions are reversed. " What has become of your old servant Robert ? You have not surely parted with him ? '^ said a friend to an aged gentleman, at the door of one of the metropolitan clubs. " Yes, indeed I have." " Why ? Has he not been with you for fifteen years T' " Yes. But it was full time we should part; and I will tell you why. In the first five years, he was an admirable servant; for the next five, he was a very pleasant companion ; but during the last five, he has been a most insufferable tyrant." So is it with the tobacco. At first it is taken up or put down at will, without grudge or grumble; no menial could be more submissive. Next, it comes to be quite on a par with you ; and you cannot well stir without taking it at least into consultation. But, afterwards, you are altogether its slave. Provided you do not quarrel with its exactions, and are content to hug your chains, all may go smoothly enough ; the weight of the burden is very imperceptibly felt. But if a contention should arise, and you seek to emancipate yourself at a stroke, then the true extent of the mischief flashes upon you, to your sore confusion — one of two alternatives awaiting your decision : either to fall back into helpless bondage ; or to begin a fight for freedom, of greatest pain, and even of doubtful issue. III. The evil, through your influence and example, is extended to others. Not only is harm done to your- self, but, by giving a character and commonness to the practice, you are the means of entrapping the unwary, and thereby extending the evil. You see little ragged ALCOHOL AS A LUXURY. 83 urchins on the street clubbing their few pence to pur- chase tobacco and a pipe ; then they congregate in some convenient stair, and, striking a light, take whiff and whiff about, till either sick or satisfied. They don't like the smell of the weed, far less its taste ; and how comes it that they give themselves this trouble ? Simply be- cause they see their fathers and big brothers do the same, and they think it manly. Or see that breeched boy, with hat and cane, fresh from his mother's apron- string — lounging on the portico, or strolling on the lawn, or swaggering even on the street, striving hard to seem at ease behind that enormous cigar — almost as big as himself — which seems rather to be smoking him than he it. Do you think that he would ever have ventured on such a bold experiment, unless he had seen men, gen- tlemen, sensible-looking gentlemen, such as you, similarly employed ? You say: "All very true; but it is a luxury; and I like it." In reply, let me simply ask, Is it either wise or right to indulge in a luxury — something not essential — that is hurtful, enslaving, and infectious ? Opium is an intense poison, when given either unne- cessarily, or in inordinate dose ; yet when duly adminis- tered, as necessity requires, it is one of the most precious of drugs. The medical man would be shorn of half his strength were he debarred from opium — in small doses to stimulate, in large to calm and soothe. " Thank God for opium!" fervently ejaculated one of our most expe- rienced and skilful physicians. But men in health take it as a luxury. And the same unforttinate sequence occurs as in the case ot tobacco : 84 alcohol: ITS PLACE. first, it is a servant ; then an inseparable companion ; at last a tyrant. It has a special action on the brain ; at first stimulant, afterwards sedative. At the beginning of the dose the cerebral functions are all excited, and usually in a highly pleasurable way; but as the effect accumulates, the mental products become of a morbid or perverted kind; and at length the nervous function, as regards its influence on intellect, special sense, and mus- cular power, is lulled *nto apathy and sleep. " When a Chinese is about to partake of the indul- gence," says Mr. D. Matheson, " he retires to a private apartment, and, reclining on his couch, takes his pipe, made for the purpose, and placing on the bowl of it a little opium, about the size of a pea, he sets it on fire at a small lamp, and then throwing himself back on the couch, inhales the smoke at short intervals in a listless mood, till he has attained the desired stimulus, or deli- rium, as the case may be. If he is a confirmed victim, he usually falls into a profound but restless sleep till the effects of the indulgence have passed off. In the latter case, the craving soon returns, and with it all the lan- gour and misery and pain till the next period of relief," All this is done at first by the " little pea." But " that small quantity soon loses its effect," says Dr. Little, " and, to produce the same amount of excitement, the dose must be doubled, and that again increased, till I have known the original quantity multiplied one hundred fold." Some bear up under this, without much outward sign of physical evil, as hard drinkers in this country may do ; but in general the confirmed " victim " may not conceal his chain and shackles. His body grows weak ALCOHOL AS A LUXURY. 85 and emaciated, his complexion sallow, his eye sunk and listless, his features haggard ; his body stoops, and ex- presses strongly, in every movement, a premature old age ; the mind is weak and fitful ; and the moral tone is both lowered and led astray. This is the period of com- plete abject enslavement; and th« man that, starting from his danger, would struggle to be free, must face an amount of efibrt, as regards both body and mind, that is all but overwhelming. One in a thousand may escape, as brands plucked from the burning. AVhat sane and sober man will tamper with a drug like this, encountering such a risk for such a boon ? Yet it is done by thousands in other climes ; and a like thing is clone hy thousands more among ourselves — all under the plea of luxury! Like its brother narcotics, tobacco and opium, alcohol has its seductive progress, when used as a something additional to man's ordinary wants, a "dainty," and "delightful to the senses." Exhilarating at the first, and pleasurable to the intellectual as well as to the animal sense, nevertheless it tends to pervert, and dete- riorate, and destroy what man would most wish to cherish and retain. After a time, too, the amount taken must be increased to produce even the first and best efiect ; and then the subsequent sinister tendency becomes more and more intensified. A state of mind and body is con- sequently induced which craves not only continuance but still further increase of the stimulant. And after every exhilaration there comes depression ; the reaction constant, and often great. Who so melancholy and 86 alcohol: its place. moping, in his intervals — who so sad in his sobriety, as the man who depends for mirth and gladness on this deceitful help ! Forced hilarity turns out a sorry afiair in the long run. " Go and see G-rimaldi," said Abernethy to a hopeless hypochondriac. "Alas," said the poor pa- tient, " I am the man ! " What brings relief? Again be it noted, in letters of fire — for here is the great danger — the drug itself, and nothing else, at the time. The man is bitten, and he knows it is for his life ; but he is fascinated, and must turn to the biter again. This is the terrible peculiarity of alcohol and opium. Tjaeir pleasure is followed by pain ; and to relieve that pain, a morbid instinct, all but irresistible, leads them to repeat its cause. Relief is felt — transitory and delusive — followed by reaction and relapse. And so in sad sequence the alternation goes — with no natural check to its progress. The individual is hurt, grievously hurt. When alarmed and eager to escape, he finds himself in chains as a bond slave. And, through his example, society at large is hurt likewise; for his fellows, imitating him — and they may be many — become similarly ensnared. Now we are far from asserting that this is the inva- riable result of such luxurious indulgence. We know well that there are many most estimable, upright, and Christian men, who have their alcoholic luxury day by day, and who maintain it in its original place of subjec- tion and control. Their dose is the same now as it was twenty, thirty, or fifty years ago ] they seem none the worse, either in body or mind ) and no one, perhaps, ever saw aught in them, through such indulgence, which ALCOHOL AS A LUXURY. 87 could breathe a stain on either manhood or Christianity * But what we assert is, that the tendency is as has been stated — damaging and downwards, not, only to the man but to the many. And the momentous question arises — Is this a luxury that ought to be indulged in ? Might it not be well to follow the example of one of the wisest, best, and manliest of men — "All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient; all things are lawful for me, but I will not he brought under the power of any " ? f Some may take a preliminary and general view; satis- fying themselves that all alcoholics are but a luxury at the best, and that which is not needful for any just want, but only a thing " delightful to the senses" — a ^'dainty," or mayhap a means of " gratifying a nice and fastidious * Even they, however> are not absolutely scathless. The en- slaving result has not been wholly escaped from. In advanced years they -will find it difficult to abandon the habit. And even when the mind is ready and willing to make the effort, the body may prove stubborn — the "flesh" maybe "weak." The long-continued habit may not be at once given up, without the certainty of corporeal dis- tress, and some risk of even injury thereby. -|- There is sometimes an apparent heartlessness in the arguments and illustrations of the alcoholists on this question. " The thing is dangerous in the hands of boys and fools ; but for grown and sensible men it is safe. They have it in command ; and why deny them the 'luxury?'" The razor is kept from "Tommy" in his Tommyhood; but when he is grown a man, the "razor is then placed in his hands, with full reliance that he will not cut himself — often." Indeed! He may cut his chin every day, and lose blood too. Some day, when he least expects it, he may cut his throat. There may be a little wit, but there is less wisdom, and certainly no generosity, in that — "often." 88 alcohol: ITS PLACE. appetite " — is not lawful to them, as seeking to keep the body under and bring it into subjection. With them we quarrel not ; but yet are aware that such self-denial is too transcendental for the mass of humanity. And to the latter we would venture to put the matter in another form. Granting the lawfulness of your indulgence in luxuries which are suitable and safe, how stand you to this, which is neither the one nor the other ? It is not suitable ; for we have shown that there is no exigency fitting for it in the healthy economy. And it is not safe ; for we have proved that it must hurt the healthy man more or less ', and if at any time he let go the rope with which he holds it in restraint, the most disastrous consequences may ensue. That rope is slippery — that hand is feeble — ^that risk is great. Yourself may become enslaved and lost ; you may be the means of enslaving and losing others. Whereas, by abstaining from the luxury, you sustain no harm ^ all you lose is a sensual gratification, of at least a doubtful kind; you gain a vantage-ground of great safety for yourself, against both physical and moral disaster ; and, by your influence and example, you may be the means of conferring like benefit on many around you. The man that uses alcohol as an article of food, ho- nestly believing it to be such, has some excuse. But as for him who uses it as a luxury, avowedly, with the knowledge that he must have of the risk thereby to himself and others, I do not say that he is without ex- cuse ; but this I say, that his excuse is one which it would cost both him and me some trouble to find. ALCOHOL AS A LUXURY. 89 In another way I have heard the objection put. " Be- neficent Providence has filled the earth with food con- venient for man's natural wants ; and has clothed it too with jioicerSj to regale and delight his senses. May I not look on wine in this light, and use it as I would a flower — at least occasionally?" The earth is fair with flowers — their fragrance is sweet, and their hues are beautiful. But even they are often the better of man's hand to restrain and guide ; and weeding may be done wisely, too, especially with regard to domestic interests. There is a place for everything. Shut up the most fragrant flowers in a bed-room, and let the sleeper tell what he thinks of their perfume next morning. Lite- rally he is sick of it; and well he may, for, through it, he is sick to all things else beside. There is belladonna — a graceful plant, with its dark, luscious berries, most fair to look upon. But will you place it by the nursery window, or along the daily walk of your prattling child- ren, who may be tempted to put forth their tiny hands, and pluck the deadly poison ? Nay. You will leave it where placed by nature — in the neighborhood of ruins, in waste places and solitudes. And there is aconite — beautiful in its spike of deep-blue helmeted flowers? Will you think it safe to put it into your garden, may- hap near a bed of the ^culent horse-radish, for whose root it has so often been fatally mistaken ? Better be content with some other ornament, and leave the monks- hood to its indigenous mountain sides and wooded hills. Flowers are luxuries, of the gentlest as well as of the gayest sort. Many — nay, most — are in all respects 90 alcohol: ITS PLACE. harmless, when in their proper place. Keep them there. And let those that you have nearest you, and in daily companionship, be both simple and safe — not poisonous, or even in any way hurtful, to yourselves or others. And so with alcohol. If you will have a luxury, take not that. Be content with some other, less formidable to you and yours. Again ; what is fairer than the poppy, spread broad- cast in the field ? As nature plants and rears it, it is a fit luxury to the eye. But let man, in his cunning device, torture the plant till it yield its juice ; and that luxury — not for the eye, but for a grosser sense — be- comes a deadly poison. So with the grape. What fairer than the vine — its climbing stem, its shady leaves, its gorgeous clusters ? " The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell." The ripened fruit is a " dainty," both sweet and savory; and the simple wine of the olden time, though not wholly without its alcoholic and intoxicating ingre- dient, was not unfitted to gladden the heart of man, on occasions of festive mirth. But as man's "invention" extorted opium from the poppy, so it brought "spirit" from the grape. Out of the simple luxuries that God gave him, wilful man has manufactured ■ poisons. Sam- son's riddle is reversed — out»of meat comes forth the eater; out of siceetness comes forth the strong. The occasional use of both alcohol and opium we readily admit to be most beneficial, under the exaction of disease, and the management of a physician ; but to employ either as articles of food, or as frequent luxuries, ALCOHOL AS A LUXURY. 91 is to pervert the nature of things, and wantonly to incur the risk of the greatest evils. But the grape reminds me of still another variety in the form of objection : *' Grapes, figs, apples, oranges, raisins, dates, are luxuries ; as such, they are taken after dinner — something separate from and additional to the '■ food : ^ may we not class wine among these ? May we not as well sip wine, as chew a raisin or eat a grape ? " To this we answer : I. Such fruits are food — good, wholesome food; and, when taken, should be used as part of the meal, not something additional to it. So there the analogy with alcoholics does not hold. The&e are not food, and are taken in addition to it. II. The fruity, weak, yet luscious wine of the primi- tive age was nutritious, and might rank as food ) while its small (and not invariable) alcoholic ingredient did not debar it from being used as a safe occasional luxury. But it is altogether difi"erent with the brandied wines and other strong drinks of the present day — daily, habitually, and freely consumed. They are not food, in any true sense, as we have seen ; and their use as luxuries is pernicious. III. I may eat a few bitter almonds without much harm, after dinner, though each contains an appreciable amount of prussic acid. But should it so happen that, . some years hence, bitter almonds were found to contain a much larger quantity of that deadly poison, while, not- withstanding, men had got into the habit of consuming them much more frequently and in larger quantity than before — would I, under these altered circumstances, con- 92 alcohol: ITS PLACE. sider it prudent for myself, or safe for others, to continue the indulgence in such a luxury ? This illustration seems to me to have an important bearing on the example of our Lord, so often quoted and misquoted in favor of the ordinary use of modern wine. The ordinary wine of those days was undeniably weak and fruity — little else than the expressed juice of the grape, largely diluting a small amount of alcohol produced by fermentation in the bottle, when opportu- nity was given to such change ; and, besides, most men did not drink it daily, but only now and then. Such wines as port and sherry were unknown ; alcohol, as a separate "spirit," had not begun to exist; and drunken- ness, as contrasted with many other crimes, was compa- ratively rare. Christ partook of the primitive wine; He sanctioned, by His presence, at least one vinous feast, and miraculously supplied continuance of the luxury. What He did then, and what He did always, was right — perfectly right, we know. But if we ven- ture reverentially to ask what, in this respect. He would have done, if His time of abode upon this earth had been in these latter days, may we not conclude, that He who knew what was in man, whose heart was ever full of love to man, and who went about continually doing good, would not have countenanced, but rebuked the drinking customs of the people, which, luxurious at the best, and in most cases truly vicious, obviously stand forth as the prolific cause of sin, misery, and disease, so rank and rife in the land ? * * There is nothing derogatory here to the omniscience of the Son of God. It is not doubted that He has foreseen all things from the ALCOHOL AS A LUXURY. 93 In the Scriptures we know that there " are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest unto their own destruction." Let all beware of being " led away with the error of the wicked" *^ falling from" their " own steadfastness." And if error may not be wholly escaped from, let it at least be ap- proached upon the safer side. beginning, and that the principles of His personal conduct in the world rule all time; but obviously the details of that conduct neces- sarily varied according to the circumstances of the period and place in which He became manifest in the flesh. A steady advance, in- deed, has ever taken place in the application of those principles to the practice of virtue — as wUl be evident to all who intelligently compare the treatment of the perceptive part of the Old Testament with the treatment of the like department in the New. ALCOHOL: ITS POWER For the right use of any agent, a knowledge of its power is quite essential, in order that its working may be duly regulated according to the effect which we desire to produce. Let us consider the power of alcohol somewhat in detail, although this may involve some repetition of former statements. I. The power of alcohol as a poison. — This is great, as we have seen. In a large dose it may prove instantly fatal, as if by shock ; or the victim may linger a while, dying by choking and stupor. With a less dose one may be in great danger, yet recover; carrying for many a day the traces of his injury. In a less dose still, alcohol produces what is commonly called " intoxication ;" and if this be frequently repeated, mind and body both suffer sad change — the poison acting chiefly on the brain and nervous system. From this cause, life may at any time be imperilled by the invasion of active disease — organic or functional : inflammation of the brain or its mem- branes, apoplexy, congestion, delirium tremensj insanity, epilepsy. Or, by still smaller doses, a cumulative action (94) ALCOHOL AS A POISON. 95 may be produced^ ultimately developing itself in entire prostration of the nervous system — alcoholismus chronicus — a condition very analogous to founder in the horse, though proceeding from a different cause.* Or, once more, by somewhat diminishing the frequent dose, these seemingly greater evils may be avoided, while yet the whole frame is being sapped and undermined ; not an organ or a tissue left undisturbed in its structure or function. In other words, alcohol, according to its dose, and the susceptibility of its victim, is either acute or chronic in its working ; a sudden poison, or a slow one. "A madman casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, and saith, ^Am not I in sport V " And there is many a man — virtually mad, on at least one point — a monomaniac — who daily saturates himself with this poison, and seeks moreover to scatter and inject it into others — jestingly announcing, in the midst of an uncomfortable conviction that what he says is true, that if it be a poison, as the doctors allege, it is at least a slow one. Slow it may be, yet sure. From this we learn, that if a man design to commit murder, he cannot use a more certain agent than alcohol ; and that, if bent on suicide, he will find it equally effec- tual. But if he wish to be free from blood-guiltiness, in regard to both himself and others, he will refrain from * In my young days of horsemanship, it was an invariable caution given as we started merrily from the door — " See that you don't over- ride the beast, and be sure not to give it too much loater when it's warm." The alcohol-founder in man has seldom any connection with either water or overwork. 96 alcohol: its power. the use of this agent, in such amount and manner as are invariably — sooner or later — productive of the poisonous result. II. The power of alcohol as a medicine. — This, too, is great; and, in accordance with its strength, requires most skilful management. It is a narcotic, we have seen, with preliminary stimu- lant power. And it is this stimulant action which is usually employed in medicine. If we wish to keep a part constantly cold, great care and nicety are required in managing the frigorific application — say a cold cloth — lest, through inattention, it become hot, and so induce the very opposite result to that which is desired. So with alcohol, the stimulant action needs a constant and careful watching, lest, by overdose and overaction, it pass on into the second or sedative stage. Often, no doubt, a small amount of the narcotic effect would seem to be of use in modifying the stimulant, and so giving tone, as it were, as well as action, to the organ or system worked upon. But this requires nice handling. The brain, and the nervous system in general, we have seen to be the parts chiefly acted on in the physiological working of alcohol. And, accordingly, the remedy, when properly used, is of special service in great nervous de- pression, by injury or disease ; continued for hours, or for days. To oppose, when need is, the shock of injury— as in falls, blows, fractures, wounds, burns,* and to coun- * Let it be remembered, however, that in such emergencies it may be made to do the greatest harm, through its very success as a stimu- lant. A man gets stunned by a blow or fall, and is lying pale and ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 97 teract the sinking tendency in fevers and unhealthy in- flammations, alcohol in small repeated doses is admirably efficient. It stimulates the heart and general circulation, too; and, in some affections of ^that organ, feeble action may be helpfully supported by a judicious use of alcoholics. Caution, however, is greatly needed when the remedy comes to be repeated on many occasions, or long sustained in any one occasion, lest that peculiar diseased condition of the heart and arterial tissue be induced, which alco- hol's continued presence in the blood so frequently occa- sions (page 35). It stimulates the kidney, and so may act as a diure- tic ; and when other remedies are not at hand, or have already failed, it may be used either alone or in combi- nation — unless contra-indicated by peculiarities of the case. When the powers of life are sinking, from any cause — with cold surface, feeble pulse, and general exhaus- tion — alcohol is often essential as a stimulant. The life of many a one has been saved by it. But all depends upon the regulation of the dose. Let the effect advance senseless. A blood-vessel has been torn in Ms head, and if he lie in this languid state for some hours, nature will plaster up the rent; and there will be no escape of blood, when the patient gradually comes to himself again. But in meddlesome kindness, a stinjulant is given prematurely — and, unfortunately, wine, whisky, brandy, are always at hand — the blood is made to circulate in force ere ever the rent is healed, blood escapes, apoplexy is produced, and the man dies, not of the hurt, but of the remedy. Even as a medicine, alcohol needs the greatest care. Not only is there a time for everything : time IS everything. 7 98 alcohol; its power. to the narcotic or sedative stage, and death will be has- tened in consequence. The small doses, skilfully regu- lated and repeated, and the effect of each watched by some competent eye and hand, alone can be either ser- viceable or safe. • In one case, a large dose may be used medicinally. In cramp, especially of a vital part, there may be no other narcotic by ; and, to save life, it may be needful to give such an alcoholic dose as shall attain the narcotic or sedative result. If the ordinary medicine-chest be at hand, however, there is more than one anti-spasmodic infinitely to be preferred. In smaller doses it is a carminative; and it enters into the construction of most of the fluids of that class — the warm tinctures, for example. For colic and fla- tulency, accordingly, it may answer well — provided there be no inflammatory complication, or error in diagnosis. In dyspeptics of a certain class, in whom the stomach is deficient in tone and energy, small and cautious doses of the milder alcoholics — such as wine and malt liquors — may be of service. And when such defect is the result of natural formation, all but congenital, the use of such stimulus may require to be even long continued. But in all cases of accidental origin, the medication should be temporary — means being devised and carried out for removing those causes on which the atony de- pends, and compensating by tonic remedies for the evil already done. It is to such cases that the apostolic precept applies : " Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy ALCOHOL AS FOOD. 99 stomach's sake, and thine often infirmities." Strange that men should wrest this into an injunction against water drinking, and in favor of wine drinking, in gene- ral ! Do they not see that Timothy — this pattern of men, fearing God from his youth up — was by habit a water drinker ? that he was to use wine, not as a luxury, not to please his palate, but as a medicine — for his sto- mach's sake, and his often infirmities ? and that, even then and thus, it was only " a little wine " that he was to use ? How can we torture this passage into a per- mission, far less a recommendation, to use wine for the palate's sake, without infirmity of health, and by the pint or quart? The power of alcohol, as a medicine, is limited to those cases in which a morbid necessity exists for its use. In all other circumstances, it cannot do good, and not only may, but must do more or less harm, when taken in any considerable quantity, or for a long endurance. Even in the suitable cases, the dose — ordinarily small — must be carefully regulated, and the efiects watched, lest overaction and injury ensue. III. The pmoer of aholiol as food. — This is easily stated : properly speaking, none at all. It has no power to repair waste of tissue. And though it has power — very considerable power — to supply fuel for the maintenance of temperature, yet, when ordinary food is taken in anything like sufficient quantity, alco- hol as a combustible is both unnecessary and injurious. It is only when there is no food, or food insufiicient in quantity; or '^[lialit;^, t\M^ 'XtcoMnsM hs&l^'k substi- 100 alcohol: its power. tute for it ; and then only as a means for maintaining temperature. It gives no strength, and repairs no waste; and, therefore, even as a partial substitute for food, it is not suitable for continued use, but only for the tempo- rary demands of an emergency. The power as ordinary food, then, is as nothing; while its power as a substitute for food is limited, both as to extent and time. IV. The power of alcohol as a condiment; or auxiliary to the healthy digestion of food. This, too, will be most truly represented by a negative quantity. It may be a help to weak or imperfect digestion, we have seen ; but it by no means follows that its action will be the same on a stomach that is sound and healthy. On the contrary, all the general principles we have laid down go to prove the opposite. Every one must at once admit that it has no analogy whatever to our best and most common condiment, salt. And suppose that, like mustard, pepper, or other spice, it were to act as a simple stimulant — what then? The stomach, at present healthy, and consequently sufficient in its working, is excited to an increase of its digestive power; more food is converted into tissue-repairing mat- ter than the system actually requires ; the equipoise of health is upset, and the inevitable consequence is disease — manifesting itself more or less plainly in plethora, biliousness, fever, or other disorder. Let us profit by the quaint but pregnant epitaph on the tombstone of the poor man who would dabble in physic : " I was well, but would b\3})^ttef, a'pd'htjre'Ijlicr.'/ v •* ; i oc r o ALCOHOL AS A LUXURY. 101 Alcohol is not in reality a condiment 3 and when used as such in health, has a power only for evil. That is very appreciable as regards its primary effect on the stomach ; and is still more marked with reference to its general effect, after its invariable and speedy absorption into the system. y. The power of alcohol as a luxury. — In one sense, this is undeniably great; else why the vast consumption of it as such ? The first effect is to stimulate the stomach, as we have seen; and by exciting the heart, too, to quicken the general circulation. This gives a "glow to the system, and is pleasant to the animal sense. Absorbed, as it quickly is, it acts on the brain; and the functions of this organ undergo exaltation. The intellect has a quicker and brighter movement; memory is put upon its mettle ; and the play of fancy becomes more free. This, like the former feeling, is agreeable to one's-self, and also favorable to social enjoyment; the "pleasures of the table" are enhanced. But such a state is not favorable for intellectual work, inasmuch as, even with a comparatively moderate dose, the tendency is very decidedly to the diminution of the power of voluntary control, to the perversion of intellectual per- ception, to the confounding of judgment or reason, to the abasing of all moral principle, and to the arousing of animal passion and desire. The tendency, I repeat, is always in this direction; and, therefore, it becomes at once apparent that such a luxury must always be in- dulged with no little risk to the moral and intellectual 102 alcohol: its power. Ileal th of the indulger; while the considerations in which we have already been engaged, make it abundantly plain that the danger to his physical estate is at least as certain. And, besides, this excitement is not got for nothing : it is purchased ; and part of the price paid is reaction. There is first the "ploy,'' and then the "reckoning." " Mine host," moreover, proves a most exacting and re- lentless creditor ; not one item of his claim in full will he forego ; sooner or later the last farthing must be paid up. The stimulant effect, having in due time passed away, is succeeded by a sedative one ; and the heart that had just been enjoying alcoholic gladness, finds alcoholic sadness sternly awaiting it, with all the certainty of se- quence between cause and effect. For the mercury of the animal pneumometer, when raised by the unnatural heat of spirit of wine, does not, on the removal of this, fall back to the old level from which it rose, but sinks lower; and the more sudden and great the rising, the greater and more permanent is the subsidence. So that were the luxurious bent on avoiding the marring of their pleasure, they behoved to take their alcoholic luxury in small quantities, and frequently repeated — every hour or so — as physicians give their alcoholic medicine in treating disease. That would be the only intelligible plan, at least, of endeavoring to grasp the flower without the thorn; and, after all, it would fail — the law of tole- rance proving fatal to it. What succeeds in producing and maintaining a certain efiect in the case of disease, is by reason of its success then all the more certain to fail when applied to the condition of health. Taken in large quantities, in what is ordinarily called ALCOHOL AS A LUXURY. 103 excess, these evils of alcohol are all aggravated. Reac-^ tion is great. The man that in his cups was the bravest and the best of fellows, the happiest and heartiest of good companions, is the most miserable wretch alive next day; and by this state of absolute "horror," is driven to seek a mercurial elevation once more, by a fresh pur- chase of the same article — on each occasion at a higher and higher price. By a depraved and ruinous instinct, the man looks fbr the antidote in renewal of the poison. " When shall I awake ? I will seek it yet again." This luxurious attainment of pleasure is not like that which comes by food to the hungry, rest to the weary, or draughts of cold water to the thirsty; a thing to be had always on the same terms day by day, and never palling by repetition. What both gratified and satisfied to-day, may do neither, and certainly will not do both, six months or a year hence. The brain gets hardened, we have seen — actually hardened — by alcoholic satura- tion ; and, in like manner, though not so literally, the constant use of alcoholics, even in moderate quantity, tends to harden the system to their effects ; so that the longer they are used, there is a growing necessity for a greater amount in almost each successive dose, in order to obtain the desired result — until the whole system be- comes so debilitated and depraved, that but a small quan- tity suffices to produce inebriation. Such is the tendency in all cases ; and in the great majority of cases -^ in all, indeed, when there is not the restraint of high moral principle and habitual self-command — it is realized. And yet again : If once habituated to this indul- gence, even to a moderate extent, daily, it becomes 104 alcohol: its power. enslaving. As in the case of tobacco, it grows into a necessary of life — a luxury in one sense no longer — and cannot be laid aside without an effort ; such effort im- plying not only the loss of pleasure and comfort, but the invasion of discomfort and pain of no slight amount and degree. Thus we see that the power of alcohol as a luxury, though in one sense undeniably great, is not free from most serious qualifications : a power to free, with a power to enslave ; a power to gladden, with a power to sadden ; a power to raise animal enjoyment, with a power to de- press what is best in the mind and spirit; a power to impart a temporary sense of increased health and vigor, with a power of all the while sapping and undermining both. And it falls to be the duty of every sane man to weigh these matters gravely; the boon with the bane, the purchase with the price, the pleasure with the penalty. Men in health and comfort have no apology for adopt- ing or continuing such a luxury, if, after calm consider- ation of the subject, they have been brought to an intelligent conviction that the evil overbalances the good. For the miserable in mind and body, we can at least find, if we cannot admit, an excuse. He has a strong temptation, and a bitter experience tells him he can secure a temporary success. " Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.'' But here again Scripture is often "wrested" to their "own destruc- tion." They will interpret this literally, at least they ALCOHOL AS A LUXURY. 105 act as if they did so; as if the "forgetting" of poverty, and the " remembering of misery no more," were final and conclusive. They are lulled into a pleasant dream, but the dream is not forever ; sooner or later they must awake, and the dread realities of their lives are all the more dreadful when thsown into sudden contrast with the delusive dream. Alcohol, in this respect, is Satan's chloroform.* For his own ends he drugs men with it, or lets them drug themselves, when pained and misera- ble ; for a time they not only forget their dulness, but are borne away into regions of happiness ; but, as the influences of the drug cease, the pain and the misery return — too often with a redoubled poignancy. If they would be rid of their evil, they must have done with such deceitful palliatives, and brace themselves to face the only legitimate cure. Alcohol is alleged to have other powers besides those that can be conveniently arranged under the heads of Poison, Medicine, Food, and Luxury. These we shall now proceed briefly to consider. * Carrying out the surgical illustration here, let us ask what is. the operation performed by this enemy of mankind, while his patient is made for a time senseless to the pain ? Not the excision of any mor- bid and malignant growth ; not amputation of' a member which, through injury or disease, has ceased to be useful, and become inju- rious to the system ; not the use of the cautery for the cure of any disease either of body or soul ; but excision of the better part of the mental nature, amputation of moral control, and the searing of the conscience with a hot iron — not done all at once, but at many sit- tings; the foolish patient "etherized" all the while. 106 alcohol: its power. VI. The -power of alcohol to sustain a man under hodily labor. — Many believe that such power exists to a very great degree, and they ground their belief on per- sonal observation. All is based, however, on a fallacy Labor exhausts vital strength — wasting structure — lowering function. The natural remedy for such ex- haustion is food and rest. Waste of tissue is repaired, and the living power of the renovated tissue reaccumu- lates, ready for a fresh bout of working. The exhaustion of bodily labor, remember, implies disintegration of substance, as well as diminution of power, especially in two tissues — the muscular and ner- vous : the muscular is the direct agent of work ; the nervous is the inciter and inspector — the "oversman;'' and both are more or less exhausted by their respective duties. Now, how is such exhaustion to be either retarded or recovered from ? We again say, by food and rest, pro- perly arranged in regard to time and quantity, as we have elsewhere endeavored to explain.* Let a. man have sufficient food, and sufficient rest, at the proper times ; and he needs no other corporeal help for the due discharge of his daily toil. He is thus enabled to over- take as much work as his frame is naturally fit to bear. And if, under such circumstances, he break down, or threaten to do so, it is a sign, not that he needs more working-power, but that, being overtasked, a portion of the exacted work should be foregone. And, conse- quently, the man who stimulates himself, under such cir- * " Labor Lightened, not Lost." SUSTAINING UNDER BODILY LABOR. 107 cumstaiices, is guilty of folly; while he who stimulates another, in similar circumstances, is guilty of cruelty and oppression. Now, can alcohol be brought under the category of " food '^ here ? As such only can it prove a true anti- dote to exhaustion by labor. No one asserts that it has any power to repair muscular tissue. Has it any power to nourish or repair nervous tissue ? This question is open to debate; but our best authorities answer it in the negative. Well then, if you give alcohol to a man exhausted, or being exhausted, by labor, what effect does it pro- duce ? Does it not revive him, giving to his hand a stronger grasp, and to his limbs new vigor ? do not the strokes of his hammer gain a fresh force, and does not the task which he had almost abandoned become rapidly consumed? How is this? Not that he has got any nourishment or repair — any real return of strength ; but because he has been goaded on to expend the remainder of his then existing strength or working capital, more rapidly and determinedly than he otherwise would or could (or should) have done — the ultimate result, of course, being, that when the task is done, the man is done too. The exhaustion is infinitely greater than it otherwise would have been. The alcohol does not give substance and strength to either of the decaying tissues; it only stimulates one of them — the nervous ; and so forces on this to force on the other. The nervous system is to the muscular as the rider to the horse, guiding and controlling its movements. Alcohol provides this rider with a spur 108 alcohol: its power. and whip; whereby the poor horse, jaded though he be, may be urged on to do an amount of work which otherwise he would have broken down under. With what benefit to the horse ? Exhaustion, fatigue, founder. With what benefit to the rider ? There is retribution here : the result is, fatigue and founder too ; for the alcohol, acting as a stimulant to the nervous system, exhausts its force and disintegrates its tissue in compel- ling it to urge on the muscles to a more rapid exhaus- tion of their force and disintegration of their tissue. The spur and whip, in their effects, exhaust the horse, but the labor of whipping and spurring exhausts the rider too ; and after the effort is over, both the inciter and the incited are in much the same plight. Had it not been better to have ceased from work for a time, giving the beast of burden its food and rest, the dis- mounted rider likewise seeking his refreshment and repose ; so that, after a while, both might have started with new mettle? If alcohol has any power whatever in giving strength, wind, endurance, condition, why do trainers make so little use of it in preparing their men for feats of great exertion ? AU trainers use it, we know, most sparingly ; not only in small quantity, but much diluted. And the test trainers do not employ it at all ; strictly forbidding its use, indeed, because experience has told them of its hurtful tendency, in opposing rather than favoring their object in view. " Ah but," you reply, " when the hour of trial has come — whether it be in the strain of the boat-race, the stride of the runner, or the struggle of the brutal prize- SUSTAINING UNDER BODILY LABOR. 109 fight — is there not then the ^bottle-holder'? and, judi- ciously administered, does not alcohol do good service, and show its great power, in sustaining the man in his work?" To this we answer, that the supposed case merely proves our position. The trainer did not use the alcohol ; the hottle-holder did. Why ? Simply be- cause, while it has the power of stimulating a man in the hour of exertion to take every drop of " force " out of himself that is in, it has no power of strengthening — no power of putting in a store of " force," or keeping it maintained. The " bottle-holder" cannot strengthen his man to hit a harder blow; he can only wahen Mm up, so that his existing strength may be made to go as fast and far as it can. In connection with this matter, a special reform in nomenclature is much required. "Refreshments sold here," says the alcohol-vender; and "We must have refreshment," says the alcohol-drinker. By that ex- pression they do not mean the real refreshments of food and rest, but wine, brandy, beer, and all the alcoholics. In one sense, no doubt, these may make a man " fresh " — according to the slang acceptation of the term; but that is their only claim to the title of " refreshments." They cannot truly refresh under the fatigue and exhaus- tion of labor ; they only stimulate, and that in rather a left-handed way. And the alcohol-vender is not content with styling himself a purveyor of " refreshments ; " he must assume the name of " victualler " too ! " Why are the trout not taking to-day ? " said a disappointed angler on Tweedside to an old sergeant of dragoons, who plied the gentle art 110 alcohol: its power. as a trade/ and was great authority in all matters pisca- torial. " Ah," said he, " I dinna ken ; but there's some- thing far wrang; they'll no come up to their vittels the day ava ! " That is the only precedent, that I know of, for alcohol-venders designating themselves " victuallers," and their goods, " victuals." The poor trout, darting after the gay and gaudy fly, finds a sad reaction in the barbed steel that is struck into his flesh. And the tippler ex- periences a like penalty in the after-workings of his *' victuals" and "refreshment." But alcohol, as we have seen, is not without its advo- cates — intelligent, interested, and indefatigable. They do not easily abandon its cause. Driven to admit that it has no power to repair tissue and restore strength, they will yet put in a claim for it as a means of retarding the exhaustion of strength, and diminishing the disintegra- tion of tissue — on this ground : Observation shows that a working man, under the use of alcohol, throws off less waste tissue, by the organs of excretion, than he does without it. Granted. But because less waste material is thrown off", does it necessarily follow that less waste is made. Is it not at least possible, that the same or even greater waste taking place, more is retained within the system — in the blood, contaminating that all-important fluid ? In other words, may not the effect of alcohol be, not to delay or diminish the waste of tissue, but, while acting in a precisely opposite way, to delay and diminish the getting rid of that waste — the amount of which it has increased ? All research goes to answer that question according to the latter alternative. Alcohol, we have seen, has a very SUSTAINING UNDER BODILY LABOR. Ill decided tendency, in the animal system, to get rid of itself by oxidation and excretion, usurping the place of matters natural to the blood, which ought to be oxidated and excreted, and which would have been so but for the forwardness of the alcohol. They remain, consequently, circulating in the blood, which becomes less and less arterial in its character, more and more venous, less and less fit for nourishing the frame. Now, here comes in a third injurious effect of the alcohol ) and its relation to labor, therefore, will stand as follows : — 1. It does not directly repair and nourish, as azotised food does. 2. So far from retarding, it creates a moi'e rapid consump- tion or waste of material, than otherwise would have been the case; so increasing the ultimate amount of exhaustion. 3. By preventing oxidation and excretion of the increased waste, it contaminates the blood, and sending down to the muscles and nerves a fluid not suffi- cient for their due nourishment and repair, still further aggravates the, evil. In other words, so far from retard- ing waste, it hurries it on ; so far from favoring, it op- poses the power of nourishment and repair. Alcohol does not contribute one solitary brick to maintain the wall of the animal economy; nor does it at all retard the spontaneous crumbling of it. On the contrary, it both enlarges the existing breach, and thwarts the masonry that would fill it up. He is surely an unwise builder, therefore, who uses so distempered a mortar ! Food and air, besides rest, are specially required by the working-man ; and alcohol, according to its advocates, helps him to both. But we have seen that such is not the case. It is no true food ; and its atmospheric rela- 112 alcohol: its power. tioiis amount practically to an obstructive denial of oxygen. While the supply of that is limited, alcohol takes the lion's share, and leaves the food and waste starving. In consequence, ill-digested food, and unmo- dified waste, become pent up in the system; and the result is as if the man were breathing a foul atmosphere, or had his head partially aJffected by an exhausted re- ceiver. Let a man, after a hard day's work, retire to rest under the "night-cap" of a goodly allowance of alcoholics, and it is practically as if he had shut himself into a box-bed, or gone to sleep on the top of a dunghill, or tied a cravat tightly round his neck almost to strangu- lation. Air gets into his lungs, but it does not do the work it is intended for there ; the needful matters are oxidated imperfectly, if at all; and he is not likely, under such circumstances, therefore, to awaken strengthened and refreshed. On the contrary, dry tongue, aching head, heavy eyes, weak back, dull spirits, and leaden brain, all tell him that his lungs have been sadly de- frauded, or cheated somehow, when he was sleeping. If we are to have cordials and restoratives, let us have those which really do something of what alcohol pro- fesses to do and does not. You have seen a thoughtless and unskilful horseman, his hands busy with the whip, his seat slack, his legs dangling and jerking like a gal- vanized frog's, his spurred and bloody heels going fast and furious " like a fiddler's elbow,'' his reins bose on the horse's neck, its nostrils red and heaving, its eyes bloodshot, its ears drooping, its panting flanks drawn up. The animal is galloping painfully through the deep plough ; it .will drag weary legs home to-night ; and very SUSTAINING UNDER BODILY LABOR. 113 probably it may never do a day's work more. The rider is alcohol j or rather, to fall back upon our former illus- tration, it is the nervous system riding to the orders and wearing the livery of alcohol. But there is another be- side him. Firm in the saddle, and with his hands well down, he has a skilful pull upon the hridle; keeping the horse well together, he guides his every motion by the pressure of an unarmed limb — the two making common cause, as if a centaur. That horse has as much to carry, and as far and as fast to go, as the other ; but he is not distressed; he will find his stable cheerily, and a night's rest and feeding will leave him fresh and uninjured. Dropping metaphor, cofiee and tea are far safer stimu- lants to the working-man than any form of alcohol. Experience says that with them he can do more work, and better work, for a longer time, than with any form or quantity of alcohol. Practical and personal observa- tion has proved it ; and science does not refuse its con- firmation. For physiologists tell us that these comforts of life have remarkable power — especially coffee — of toning the vascular and nervous system, and at the same time limiting the waste of tissue,* while they have none of the drawbacks of alcohol. A working-man under alcohol, once more let me remind you, gives off very little waste by his excretory organs — the liver and kidney, for example ; but that does not prove that little * Dr. J. Lehmann remarks " that coffee produces on the organism two chief effects, which it is very difficult to connect together — viz., the raising the activity of the vascular and nervous systems, and pro- tracting remarkably the decomposition of the tissues."- 8 114 alcohol: its power. waste is made. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that an unusual amount of waste occurs, but does not show, because kept noxiously circulating within the system. A double harm is consequently done. An unusual amount of the man's body is decomposed, and what remains is poisoned and enfeebled by the waste being in great part retained. On the other hand, a man using tea or coffee instead of alcohol, will do as much work, and show as little waste ; and yet nothing occurs to prevent all that does run to waste from being safely and satisfactorily got rid of. Nothing is unnecessarily expended, and nothing is injuriously retained; whereas, in the case of alcol^ol, it is the converse that holds true. Even such restoratives as these — simple and safe though they comparatively be — are not absolutely re- quired, however. Look to facts, and we shall find men undergoing the heaviest possible amount of bodily labor with the use of the essentials only — food and water- Look to troops campaigning. Look to the Guacho of South America, of whom Sir Francis Head remarks — "As his constant food is beef and water, his constitution is so strong that he is able to endure great fatigue ; the distances he will ride, and the number of hours he will remain on horseback, would hardly be credited." And lest it be supposed that these men are cast in some pe- culiar mould, not fitting for us commoner mortals, li§ten to Sir Francis's experiment on himself. He did as they did; and, "after I had been riding for three or four months," says he, " and had lived upon heef and water, I found myself in a condition which I can only describe by saying that I felt no exertion could Mil me^ SUSTAINING UNDER BODILY LABOR. 115 What is meant is, that when restoratives and luxuries are either desired or needed, it will be true wisdom in the working-man to eschew the alcoholics in favor of ^' that cup which cheers but not inebriates." Water and milk, no doubt, are the drinks natural to man; and rank, accordingly, as articles of ordinary wholesome diet. Tea and coffee, though not of this class, are not in the same category as alcohol — they are more than mere luxuries, and, though somewhat medi- cinal, are not poisons. They are not without some fair claim to rank as food, fitted for nutrition as well as respi- ration. Besides the active principle, theine — a nitro- genous compound — they contain a very considerable proportion of starch and gum, as well as of gluten ; this last in such amount as to be equal to one-fourth of the weight of the dry leaves. In ordinary fusion, indeed, this gluten is but sparingly dissolved ; but were the pow- dered dry leaves consumed as beans or peas are, they would prove about equally nutritious. There is also a certain proportion of fat or oil in both tea and coffee; while in cocoa the amount of this is very large. While thus these things may rank as food — far more truly than alcohol — they are in another sense accessory to food, either as luxuries, or in a medicinal point of view. For besides their power of restraining the con- sumption of tissue, they excite a peculiar action in the nervous system. This action is neither truly stimulant nor sedative, but rather tonic ; soothing when there is over-excitement, rousing when there is depression; and always tending to relieve the nervous centres from con- gestion of blood. Besides, from this pleasant and bene- 116 alcohol: its power. ficial working there is no untoward reaction, unless the tea or coffee be taken in inordinate quantity; then — especially in the case of coffee — unpleasant symptoms do occur, affecting both the circulating and nervous systems. ' Tea and coffee, then, may rank both as food and medi- cine. And the question naturally arises, in reference to their latter character, Whether the copious and constant use of them as food is quite proper and safe ? This, as we have seen, is not essential, even under the greatest exertion. And without presuming to dogmatise, we would venture to say that when used as ordinary diet, or as luxuries in connection with it, they ought to be taken weak, as well as in moderate quantity — in other words, temperately;* while large and strong doses ought to be reserved for the necessities of the nervous system arising from exhaustion by labor or thought, depression by accident, or disorder by disease. When judiciously used, they may contribute greatly to our comfort — as much as any form of alcohol can do, and with none of its sinister results on body, mind, or morals. Call them medicines, if you will. They are " domestic medicines," at once safe and suitable ; and, as such, the canister may range on the frugal cupboard far more appropriately than the decanter or the black bottle, the tankard, the greybeard, or the glass. The great advantage of the water drinker, as com- pared with the alcoholist, under work, is this : He has * Some have alleged that the success of homoeopathic practitioners is not unconnected with the sparing use, or absolute interdiction, of coffee and tea, as well as of all alcoholics, in ordinary diet. SUSTAINING UNDER BODILY LABOR. 117 the same strength, with greater self-control. He is ready to stop when necessity requires that he should, and runs less risk, consequently, of injury by excessive strain. He does not expend a temporary energy, at the expense of future exhaustion. He does not avail himself of a doubtful and deceitful help, at the cost of deterioration of the blood, and consequent danger to health and life. He does his work at least as copiously and as well as the other, even for a time ; and in long continuance of labor, he will do it both more copiously and better. He ob- tains his desired end in all respects satisfactorily. There is no lassitude, headache, feverishness, foul tongue, or aching limbs next day — even after the hardest labor. All is fresh, and supple, and free. There is no reaction.^ Has alcohol no real and useful power, then, in rela- tion to bodily labor ? Yes ; but much more limited than is generally supposed. It may be of use in an emer- gency — not for continuance. If an honest, willing horse has a daily round of work to do, what fits him for it is not the whip or the spur, but corn and hay, and water, and regular rest. But if at any time a special efibrt is to be made, and the ordinary means do not seem suffi- cient to secure it, then whip and spur may be employed — though always with caution. If a mighty load is to be stirred, if a yawning ditch has to be leaped, if the rising tide or burning prairie be pressing behind the rider, he may well use both heel and hand ; even should * " I have backed as many as 60 tons in a day, with perfect ease," says a London coal-whipper, "since I took the pledge. But, hefore, I should scarcely have been able to crawl home ; certain to have lost the next day's loorh." 118 alcohol: its power. he have cause to fear that the effort which saves his own life may be fatal to the faithful steed that carries him. As a man spurs his horse, so may he spur himself, for the accomplishment of some special end. But obviously that end ought to be of sufficient importance to warrant such a means ; and the spurring, even when warrantable, must be conducted with prudence and caution. Alcohol is not a suitable means of continuously sustaining man under bodily labor : it is only a spur for a spurt. VII. The power of alcohol to sustain a man under mental labor. All that has been said against its use in bodily labor applies here ] and something more. What is true of the muscles is true of the brain — the mate- rial organ with the co-operation of which mental work is done. In labor of the hand, alcohol stimulates the brain to stimulate the muscle, and so exhausts both brain and muscle. In labor of the head, alcohol sti- mulates the brain to an increase of function under men- tal power, and so effects a concentrated cerebral exhaus- tion, without being able, as we have seen, to afford compensating nutrition or repair. On the contrary, one effect of alcohol, formerly considered, is to impair the nutritive qualities of the blood; and the brain, conse- quently, comes to be imperfectly nourished. The in- creased tear and wear meets with less than the ordinary renovating supply; and this state of things, long con- tinued, may produce an absolute wasting of the brain's substance. But besides, how does it affect the mind ? Such subtle influences, of course, we cannot trace. But we know SUSTAINING UNDER MENTAL LABOR. 119 full well, as was formerly stated, that the use of alcohol, while in moderate doses exciting, quickening, intensify- ing mental action, in part, yet always has a tendency to diminish voluntary control,* as well as to depress the moral nature, and clog the faculty of reason. Is that a suitable stimulus for the student ? is it a safe stimulus for the man? There is the same common fallacy here, of course, as in the case of manual labor. The stimuhis is felt to do good. " I could not work my work without it." Per- haps. But at what cost are you working your work ? Premature and permanent exhaustion of the muscles is bad enough; but premature and permanent exhaustion of brain is infinitely worse. And when you come to a point where work must cease or the stimulus be taken, do not hesitate as to the right alternative. Don't call for your pale ale, your brandy, or your wine. Shut your book, close your eyes, and go to sleep ; or change your occupation, so as to give a thorough shift to your brain ;f and then, after a time, spent, as the case may be, either in repose or recreation, you will find yourself fit to resume your former task of thought without loss or de- * It is lawful to learn from the rogue here. Look to the professed gambler. His victims he lures on to wine and brandy, but himself tastes never a drop. While he would have their power of mental control asleep, he keeps his own wide n wake, with his " head cool." f " Rest in thought is procured by abstaining from all voluntary effort of thinking, or by changing the train and character of thought from grave to gay, from what is severe and exhausting to what is felt to be light and exhilarating — just as muscles are often relieved, not by absolute cessation, but by alteration in their use." — Physio- logy in Harmony with the Bible. 120 alcohol: its power. triment. Not so with the alcoholic stimulus ; the result of this is untoward in two ways — corporeally, exhaust- ing; intellectually and morally, deteriorating. While, then, the power of alcohol in sustaining manual labor is limited and temporary, its power in reference to , mental labor is worse than nugatory; it is noxious, and not warrantable, even for a time, to a man in health. Look to the mental workers under alcohol. Take the best of them. Would not their genius have burned not only with a steadier and more enduring flame, but also with a less sickly and noxious vapor to the moral health of all around them, had they been free from the unnatu- ral and unneeded stimulus ? Take Burns, for example. Alcohol did not make his genius, or even brighten it. It burnt it off all too soon; and though at times the flame may have been both bright and pure, and the fra- grance sweet as violets, full well you know that often the light was lurid, the odor naught. As for the mere intellectual power, try a simple expe- riment on yourself. Swallow a draught of porter or ale — a pint or a quart, according to your measure. Then sit you down to the solution of a mathematical problem, or to the following out of a hard logical argument, or to the detection of a fine metaphysical subtlety. How sadly hampered you will feel! A painful, puzzled attempt will terminate, not in satisfaction or success, but in a mortified conviction that you have foolishly lubricated your mental machinery with something else than oil; claggy and confounding. Or, if you prefer an experiment already made, by one transcendently qualified for the task — take the evidence SUSTAINING UNDER MENTAL LABOR. 121 of Hugh Miller. "The workman," says he, in his " Schools and Schoolmasters/' " had a ^ founding pint,' and two whole glasses of the whisky came to my share. A full-grown man would not have deemed a gill of usquebaugh an overdose, but it was considerably too much for me ; and when the party broke up, and I got home to my books, I found, as I opened the pages of a favorite author, the letters dancing before my eyes, and that I could no longer master the sense. I have the volume at present before me — a small edition of the ^ Essays of Bacon.' . . . The condition into which I had brought myself was, I felt, one of degradation. I had sunk, by my own act, for the time, to a lower level of intelligence than that on which it was my privilege to be placed ; and, though the state could have been no very favorable one for forming a resolution, I in that hour determined that I should never again sacrifice my capacity of intellectual enjoyment to a drinking usage; and, with God's help, I was enabled to hold by the determination." Or, if you still demur, and allege that this is the tes- timony of a Scotch and stern school, take that racy Englishman and laughing philosopher, Sydney Smith, who writes thus to Lady Holland, in 1828: — "Many thanks for your kind anxiety respecting my health. I not only was never better, but never half so well; indeed, I find I have been very ill all my life without knowing it. Let me state some of the goods arising from abstain- ing from all fermented liquors. First, sweet sleep; having never known what sweet sleep was, I sleep like a baby or a plough-boy. If I wake, no needless terrors, no 122 alcoijol: its power. black visions of life, but pleasing bopes and pleasing recollections : Holland House, past and to come ! If I dream, it is not of lions and tigers, but of Easter dues and tithes. Secondly, I can take longer walks, and make greater exertions, without fatigue. My understand- ing is improved, and I comprehend political economy. I see better without wine and spectacles than when I used both. Only one evil ensues from it : I am in such extravagant spirits that I must lose blood, or look out for some one who will bore or depress me. Pray leave off wine : — the stomach is quite at rest; no heart-burn, no pain, no distention." Or what say you to a transatlantic? the late Rev. Samuel Miller, D. D., of Princeton, New Jersey. For sixteen years he had followed the advice of his physi- cians, in drinking one or two glasses of sound wine daily. " During all this time," says he, " my health was delicate. More than six years ago, when approaching my sixtieth year, I broke off at once. The experiment had not proceeded more than a month, before I became satisfied that my abstinence was very strikingly beneficial. My appetite was more uniform, my digestion improved, my strength increased, my sleep more comfortable, and all my mental exercises more clear ^ jpleasant, and suc- cessful'* The wise brain-worker, when thoroughly fatigued, will rest. When needful of a stimulus and restorative, as ofttimes he may be, ere the ordinary or available time of rest has come, he will prefer tea or coffee to alco- holics. The former, used in moderation, have no remote evil effect, like alcohol. Unlike it, they do not send SUSTAINING UNDER MENTAL LABOR. 123 blood to the brain, but tend rather to coax blood from it — " clearing the head/' as the common expression bears ; they stimulate function, at the same time causing no unusual tear and wear of structure, but rather dimin- ishing what would otherwise occur ; the whole mind is raised, and no portion of it depressed or deteriorated. We can appreciate the value of a pinch of snuff, when the practice is not habitual ; that is, when the insufflation is followed by sneezing, and blowing of the nose, and when the narcotic effect of the drug is not manifested. But it really puzzles one to know how alcohol can benefit the student. Determining blood to the brain in unusual quantity, and that blood deteriorated in quality so as to be no longer well fitted for healthy stimulus and nutri- tion, but calculated rather to induce stupor ; the brain stimulated in an irregular and untoward way — reason hampered, if not perverted, and the power of voluntary control more or less diminished ; the moral sense lowered, while animal passion and desire are roused ; the brain's actual substance, too, undergoing some structural change, not for the better — how can this state of things favor any form of sound mental labor? Genius may have its poetical and imaginative powers stirred up into fitful paroxysms by alcohol, no doubt ; the control of will being gone or going, the mind is left to take ideas as they come, and they may come brilliantly for a time. But, at best, the man is but a revolving light. At one time a flash will dazzle you — at another the darkness is as that of midnight; the alternating gloom being always longer than the period of light, and all the more intense by reason of the other's brightness. 124 ALCOHOL: ITS POWER. "While imagination sparkles, reason is depressed. And, therefore, let the true student, as we have said, eschew the bottle's deceitful aid. He will think all the harder, all the clearer, and all the longer; and in due time, he will prove that the designation of "water-drinker" can carry no imputation of missiness or mediocrity. Reason as well as experience warn him to join Samuel Johnson in his cups — avoiding, however, intemperance even in these — rather than to take part with Byron or Burns in their bottles and bowls. But I may be told — " You are too sweeping in your remarks. Are there not many able students, deep and accurate thinkers — good and godly men too — who habit- ually take a moderate alcoholic stimulus, and think themselves all the better for it ?" True. But in these cases the dose is small, and kept uniformly so — a thing that not every one can do. Besides, the tendency in the effects of even a small dose is sinister, as has been stated ; and well though they have done with the alcohol, they would have done better without it. The feeling of benefit is only an assumption ; let them try an interrup- tion, and they will find that they have been leaning on a fallacy. And, moreover, they are working at a great cost; the alcohol is not removing, but on\j masking their fatigue, at the same time spun-ing them on to greater and more sustained exertion. A horse, suddenly taken lame, limps, and is led to the stable. But, if he has been " nerved," he may dash the diseased foot as he will upon the hard streets — ^he may do much work, and seem sound too — though there is something peculiar and un- natural in his way of going, and the rider at all times SUSTAINING UNDER MENTAL LABOR. 125 sits insecurely ; and all the while the navicular disease is making double progress, and bringing the poor animal to the tanyard before his legitimate time. The alcohol does to the hard student what "nerving" does to the horse. Let both keep their pain and fatigue — if not unmitigated, at least unmasked ; for these are Nature's wise and salutary checks against excess of labor. Let me state here a case well illustrating the drift of my argument. A friend of mine, a noble workman, of both body and mind, had fallen into weak health ; and having been enjoined the use of wine, as a needful medi- cine, he took his few glasses of sherry daily, although professedly an abstainer. In course of time, the patient became oblivious of one important principle of practice, formerly alluded to (p. 60). He forgot to " take stock," from time to time, and see how his trade was flourishing. The medicine was continued, upon chance, for years. I ventured occasionally to suggest a doubt of the same necessity for stimulus remaining as at first. But I made no impression, until my views happened to receive an important backing by a threatening oi gout. My friend, then truly disquieted as to his tactics, resolved to change them on a venture. The wine was wholly given up, the gout disappeared, and the man rose like a giant. He found that he could do much more work now than for- merly, with much less fatigue ; and he needed to be re- strained, lest by excess of labor, from the very love of it, he should endanger a relapse. One alcoholic result — the gout — did good service here. But it is not always, or indeed often, that so alcohol works its own check and cure. 126 alcohol: its power. It is familiar to every one, that in the present day the life of busy man* is more precarious than of yore. We hear of many sudden as well as early deaths. We stop a little to shake our heads sadly, and then push on into the crowd again, unheeding. The lesson is not learnt. Yet this, I feel, very sure, ought to be part of the lesson taken home — that at least two causes are concerned in this infraction of longevity : men are mood- ily and muddily overworking both hand and head, and they know not that they do so, by reason of a general use of alcoholic stimulants. Deceived by these, the ex- cess of work is both undertaken and overtaken — after a fashion — but at the cost of a terrible increase of the tear and wear. Alcohol to the working human frame is as a pin to the wick of an oil-lamp. With this you raise the wick from time to time, and each raising may be followed by a burst of brighter flame ; but, while you give neither cotton nor oil, the existing supply of both is, through such pin-work, all the more speedily consumed. From what has been said, it necessarily follows that a man who works both mind and body much must not only fail to benefit, but suffer harm, by the use of alcoholic stimulants. We need not repeat the reasoning. And to those who refuse to be convinced by reason, we would simply say — try experience. Make trial of the change — from the alcoholic to the simple plan of working. * I mean those who are actively engaged in business, and whose labor is specially of a mental kind : working under the high-pressure system of the time. SUSTAINING UNDER MENTAL LABOR. 127 Not limiting the time of probation to weeks or days, however, as is generally done. You must give time to the system to escape from the slavery of habit. Months are needful for that; and then you may expect the tests to begin to tell. Great blundering is constantly being committed in this way. A man has been for years — well-nigh a lifetime — habituated to moderate alcoholic stimulus, and he says : " Oh, I'll make a fair trial with- out it. It's all one to me. I'm sure I shall be most happy if the experiment succeeds." And he stops his wonted allowance for a week, or a fortnight, or a month. At the end of that time he comes and says : " I knew what would happen. Your water system won't answer with me. I have given it a fair trial, you see ; but I have lost flesh, appetite, and strength. I am uncomfort- able, too, and can't get through my work. I must stick to the old way." He thinks he has given your way an exceedingly "fair trial," and he looks to be mightily commended at your hands ; yet all the while it has had no trial at all. He never entered upon the road; he stuck half-way in the avenue leading to it. He found himself in the modified " horrors" of abandoning an old alcoholic habit; and by an error of reason, rather than of intention, he hurried back instead of pressing on for .an escape. Back to what ? To a certain slavery, which even in its lightest and best form is both irksome and unsafe. Or, again, if the sceptic refuse to experiment upon himself, let him take the evidence of those who have done so, and who must be taken as highly competent evidence. Richard Cobden has gone through hard work 128 alcohol: its power. of both body and mind, especially as an agitator ; and he tells us frankly : " The more work I have had to do, the more I have resorted to the pump and the teapot." Or hear Dr. Carpenter's Highland minister — and who works harder with hand, and head, and heart, than the faithful, zealous, earnest pastor ? his labor concentrating on that very day, too, which to other men brings rest. " The last thing which he had relinquished," says Dr. C, " was his tumbler of whisky-toddy on Sunday even- ings, which seemed to afford him a great refreshment after the fatigues of two long services, into which he was accustomed to throw his utmost energy. He gave up this at first merely as an experiment, and went to bed on Sunday nights in by no means as comfortable a state as he had been used to do; but he soon found that he rose so much fresher on Monday mornings, and was so much fitter for mental and bodily exertion on that day, that he continued his abstinent practice from a con- viction of its decided benefit." Or, if you refuse to be convinced by a Highlander and Presbyterian, take the equally strong evidence of a Southron churchman — the Yicar of Plymouth. " You all know that my work on the Sabbath day is very hard, and I used to think that I was entitled to something good after the labors of the day, and generally took a stiff glass of brandy and water. I did this, as I thought, to strengthen me, but I inva- riably passed a restless night, was always Mondayish, and felt unfit for anything ; but since I have given up the brandy and water, I feel as well on Monday morning as I did on Saturday night." To all clergymen we would respectfully yet earnestly SUSTAINING UNDER MENTAL LABOR. 129 Bay — Go and do lihewUe ! And we would remind them further, that they are professionally liable to a still more insidious temptation, when they do feel " Mondayish on the Monday." Unable for wonted work with wonted vigor on that day, they may then specially resort, through a kind of professional instinct, to alcoholic help, and, rcith that, labor on as on other working days. The result is in two points of view injurious: — 1. They may be readily drawn thus into a habit of dependence — to an increasing extent — on a support which is both danger- ous and deceitful. 2. They break the just and natural order of things. Monday should be to the working clergy- man his day of physical repose and recovery — his Sab- bath, so far as the body is concerned. It is natural that he should feel listless and disinclined for exertion on that day; and it is right that he should rest accordingly. It is unnatural to oppose that sense of lassitude by tem- porary and artificial means ; it is wrong in him to labor on that day, except at the call of "necessity and mercy;" and it is doubly wrong in his people to ask him to do otherwise. His wisdom as well as his duty is — to be content with the Mondayish feeling on the Monday, and willingly to submit to its exaction of repose — well as- sured that, after simple and sweet rest during that day and night, Tuesday will come, brighter and better, in its own natural way, to both summon and support him in his resumption of duty. He should wait for this day patiently — not seek to conjure it some ten or twenty hours too soon. In one word, alcohol's real power — whether as to mind or muscle — is well illustrated by one of its common 9 130 alcohol: its power. results — delirium tremens: excitement with weakness. Alcohol has power to excite, but not to strengthen j on the contrary, with the excitement, sooner or later, comes debility. VIII. The power of alcohol in relation to the endurance of cold. — The common belief that alcohol has great power in this way is easily understood. Drink a glass of spirits, pure or diluted, and you feel the stomach warmed ; the heart and pulse beat quicker and stronger, the whole frame glows, and the warmth is at once speedy, decided, and comfortable ; while, at the same time, the nervous centre is quickened to a more vivid perception of the comfort so induced. ^^ Waiter ! bring me a glass of brandy; for I am chilly and cold." So reasons and acts the common man ; and as he glows and glistens in the fumes of his hot tumbler, he thinks himself a most shrewd practitioner. His scientific brother can explain the matter more thoroughly. He looks on the human interior as a mere laboratory; and on the functions of its various parts, as on the action of mere chemicals. He knows that alcohol is a grand combustible ; and that, when taken internally, its forte is the production of heat by ready oxidation in the lungs. What so suitable, then, to raise tempera- ture, when temperature is low? If the man is cold, and wants to be warm, give him alcohol, and plenty of it. Heap fuel on the fire, ply the poker, and blow the bellows ! But the burning of coals in an inanimate grate is one thing; and the burning of alcohol in living lungs is IN RELATION TO ENDURANCE OF COLD. 131 quite another. Man is not a mere spirit-lamp. Nay, lie is not intended to be a spirit-lamp at all, as we have seen — but an oil-lamp ; and to be used on the principle of a moderator. Oil in the food is the special lung- combustible for heating the frame, designed and provided by nature, in addition to the burning of the waste mate- rial of the body; and, as formerly stated, it is believed that such waste is converted into an oleaginous form on purpose to undergo such change. These combustibles are intended to be burnt, and ought to be burnt ; if not burnt, harm accrues in many ways; if burnt, they are abundantly sujficient for the due maintenance of tem- perature. Besides, it will be remembered that a supply of oxygen is needed to go forward with the blood, and carry on the heat-causing changes of nutrition and decay of tissue (p. 19). Now, if alcohol is taken in quantity, it usurps the place of such combustibles. For a time, it may raise the temperature high enough ) but important work is left undone, noxious matter is retained, and the whole organism suffers in consequence. Alcohol, in short, acts the part of a forward volunteer : doing the work of the regular staff; throwing these into dangerous idleness; not doing their work better — if so well ; and putting the whole arrangements into thorough disorder. Indeed, the work is not so well done. Chemistry will quite war- rant the strongest assertion of this. For, according to Liebig, the comparative power of these matters as com- bustibles may be rated thus : Supposing that 100 parts of oil are required to produce a certain result by its combustion, the attainment of the same result by starch 132 alcohol: its power. will require 240 parts ; by sugar, 249 parts ; by alcobol, 266. So that, although alcohol is no doubt a very fair combustible in its way, yet it is decidedly inferior to all those others which nature obviously prefers, and has taken care to provide in ample abundance. That it should occupy a lower grade even than sugar becomes intelligible enough, when the matter is regarded in a strictly chemical point of view; seeing that it is not only a product of sugar^ but also a degradation of that substance hy putrescence — altogether a very " inferior article." Suppose a daily repast provided by a master for a certain number of his hired servants. There is enough for all, but no extravagant excess. He expects that, refreshed by their feeding, they will rise and do their work 'y the doing of which, and the doing of it well, is essential to the safety and order of the house and house- hold. But an unbidden guest steps in ; and professing great power as well as great willingness for this par- ticular work, helps himself to the food, first and fast, leaving scarcely a mouthful to the hungry domestics. Unsatisfied and unrefreshed, they have no power to exe- cute the task that now awaits them. But no matter. He is both satisfied and refreshed, and he will do it for them. Accordingly he sets to work, and the thing is done — but only in an imperfect and inferior way; while the servants, by reason of unwilling and unwonted idle- ness, as well as of imperfect and insufficient nourishment, are permanently deteriorated. Would the master of the household tolerate the presence of that forward, greedy, self-sufficient, incompetent, and unprofitable guest ? For IN RELATION TO ENDURANCE OF COLD. 133 once, perhaps, he might. But surely on his presenting himself the second day, it would be well to show him summarily to the door. "Ah," but you say, " the illus- tration does not hold good. There may be a limit to the servant^s food, but there is no limit to the supply of oxygen from the atmosphere." Nay, but there is. The oxygen in the air is indeed inexhaustible; but the amount of it which human beings can receive from the air, and convey into the blood, is limited. And out of that lim- ited supply the alcohol, helping itself first — as unwel- come, as unnecessary — leaves no sufficiency for the needing and needful consumers. Besides, as we have seen, after the paroxysmal activity of alcohol, there invariably comes reaction ; and this is a serious matter, even supposing that alcohol did do its work well as a heating agent. The effect does not last. Depression follows the excitement, sooner or later. It is a bad sign of the weather when the barometer is jumping up and down. Steadiness is the great thing in the weather-glass. But there is no steadiness in the mercury of the human frame, when swayed by alcohol : it rises suddenly, and falls just as soon ; according to its rising so is its depression ; and each successive dip goes lower than its predecessor. Alcohol, we repeat, is but a poor substitute for food, even as a calorific. Indeed, volunteered substitutes are seldom equal to the regular workman, even for a time, much less when taken into constant employ. Let us take one more illustration. There is a fire- place, and in it you want to do two things. You wish to consume some rubbish, the consumption of which is 134 alcohol: its power. essential to your just economy; and, by its burning, you wish to maintain due heat in the apartment. For this double purpose you put wood and other kindling mate- rial below the rubbish, and burn it steadily away. All goes well : the rubbish is consumed, the heat is kept up, the grate does not suffer, and the atmosphere is kept pure and wholesome. But suppose that after you have nicely adjusted matters, some one interferes, and placing some very inflammable substance on the top, sets fire to that. What happens ? The top combustible blazes, the rubbish smoulders and smokes; for a time the apartment is warm, probably to excess ; but soon the blaze grows low and dim, and when the upper layer of substitute has been burnt clean away, the rubbish is left black and unconsumed ; the temperature falls low — too low, for you feel damp and chill ; and the atmosphere of the apart- ment, charged with dark sulphurous fumes, grows sti- fling and oppressive. Moreover, when you have occa- sion to examine the grate, you will probably find that the top blaze, short though it was, has proved rather too strong for it; the back is split, and the ribs are begun to be eaten through. This is bad enough, even for once ; and when it comes to be repeated day by day, you can readily imagine the aggregate result. So, truly, is it with alcohol as a combustible accessory in our frames. It burns brightly, and warms us for a time ; but its glow soon passes off, and the reaction is very cold; the waste material, as well as the combustible food — both intended by nature for burning — are left unconsumed ; the whole frame is occupied, as it were, with an atmosphere of disorder, if not of disease, in IN RELATION TO ENDURANCE OF COLD. 135 consequence ; and the stomach, lungs, liver, and other organs in which the treatment of the alcohol has oc- curred, are more or less seriously damaged thereby. Nay, they are certainly ruined in the long run — and that at no distant date, if the alcoholic burning be on a large scale, and continued. And, moreover, habitual excess, as we have seen (p. 77), may ultimately convert the en- tire man into a slow match, which, when brought into contact with an accidental spark, burns slowly away, leaving no trace save an offensive oily residuum. The power of alcohol as a means of enabling us to endure a diminished temperature, then, is very limited. It may be employed now and then, in cases of extreme cold, when no sufficient food or other natural means of heat are at hand, or when there is no time to wait for food's leisurely digestion — just as we throw a piece of cannel coal upon the low fire, to brighten it up again. It sputters and sparkles cheerfully in the hearth; but when its flame is over, we are content — the more especially as during its brief blaze it has cost us some little trouble to pick its burning sparks from off the carpet. It is neither safe nor suitable fuel for continuance. And when its glow goes out, the room feels very dark : it is time to go to bed. To endure cold, let us be well and warmly clad, so as to retain the heat already existing; taking good and sufficient exercise, if possible, so as to maintain energetic circulation of the blood; avoiding over-exertion and fatigue, which necessarily bring failure and depression in both the nervous and the circulating systems ;- taking sufficiency of food, nutritious and calorific ; and, if op- 136 alcohol: its power. portunity serve and require, availing ourselves also of a due proportion of the Safe and simple stimulants — tea or coffee, warm. As examples of nutritious food, for repair of tissue, say beef, or mutton ; of calorific food, say fat, butter, or oil in any form. According to Liebig — the great che- mical authority to whom we have already appealed in this matter — one pound of fat is equal to three pounds of whisky as a heat-generator ; or, to put it in a money form, one shilling's worth of oil will go a« far, in this way, as twelve or fifteen shillings' worth of brandy.* Give me a good hearty meal of wholesome mixed food, with bread and plenty of butter, and a hot cup of good coffee, and I am then better prepared for withstanding the frost and snow, than your wiseacre who uses the alcoholic warmer, eats sparingly, and boasts of his small appetite. Nay, with such a lining I am better equipped than he who, to a cargo in all respects similar to mine, superadds a single " caulker." Nature teaches us this. Look to the Laplander and Russian. Their favorite food is fat and oil. And Eu- ropeans speedily get accustomed to it, too, in these cli- mates. There is many a lad in Scotland who has a stubborn aversion to the fat of meat; he pares it off, and piles it on his plate, let his thrifty mother say what sbe will. But send him as a cabin-boy on a Greenland * Even if the respective money values were reversed, the oil would be the better bargain. From what we have seen, alcohol was. dear at nothing ; the price is paid afterwards, in many a successive in- stalment, and with compound interest It may be sweet in the mouth, but it is very bitter in the belly. IN RELATION TO ENDURANCE OF COLD. 137 voyage, and in the northern latitudes ho will speedily get over that little difficulty : what he nauseated at home he will relish there. Oil or fat, we have seen (p. 131), is the best calorific, chemically considered ; starch and sugar the next ; al- coholics quite in the shade. How scientific man by nature is, in regard to the two first ! In cold climates, he instinctively prefers fat meats and oils^ in warm climates, he eats farinaceous food; in temperate cli- mates, he ought to judiciously combine the two kinds of diet. The Laplander eats his lard with gusto ; the Hindoo his rice ; the European has his variety. Who taught any of them to take to the lowest and worst of the calorifics ? Not nature ; but vicious custom. Not a friend, but " an enemy hath done this." And they are without excuse. For while nature gives an instinct- ive relish for what is the proper calorific, intelligent ob- servation will tell what ought to be avoided. Dr. Car- penter, for example, mentions the interesting testimony of an old man in Dorsetshire, who, though himself concerned in the sale of spirits, and not likely to decry them unnecessarily or unjustly, asserted, in regard to his employment as a fowler, " that although the use of ale or brandy might seem beneficial in causing the cold to be less felt at first, the case was quite reversed when the duration of the exposure was prolonged ; the cold being then more severely felt, the larger the proportion of fer- mented liquors taken. And he further stated, that all the fowlers of his acquaintance who had been accus- tomed to employ brandy with any freedom, while out on prolonged expeditions, had died early; he and his 138 alcohol: its powee. brother (wlio liad practised the same abstinence as him- self) having outlived nearly all of their contemporaries." We are also told that the Russian authorities, well satis- fied of the banefulness of alcohol as a calorific, interdict its use absolutely in the army, when troops are about to move during extreme cold ; part of the duty of the cor- porals being to smell carefully the breath of each man on the morning parade, and to turn back from the march those who have indulged in spirits ; " it having been found that such men are peculiarly subject to be frost- bitten and otherwise injured." And once more to quote from Dr. Carpenter : " The Hudson's Bay Company have for many years entirely excluded spirits from the fur countries to the north, over which they have exclusive control; Ho the great improvement,' as Sir John Richard- son states, ^ of the health and morals of their Canadian servants and of the Indian tribes.' " The latest authority on this subject is one in all re- spects most competent — Dr. Rae, of the Arctic expedi- tion ; and his testimony is. most explicit, that the efiect of alcohol during extreme cold is merely to purchase a temporary stimulus, at the expense of subsequent great prostration. IX. The poicer of alcohol in relation to the endurance of heat. Its friends would have it a very panacea : good against cold ; good against heat. If it is to be of any service here at all, it cannot be in consequence of, but notwithstanding, its virtues as a combustible and calorific. It must have some other mode of acting, sufficiently strong to counteract the IN RELATION TO ENDURANCE OP HEAT. 139 heat-gencrating tendency. And that can only be by its stimulant properties ; rousing tbe nervous system from tbat state of depression and languor which so commonly results from exposure to extreme heat. Let us inquire into this matter. Can it be that alco- hol is remedial to the effects of heat on the general sys- tem, as it is to the effects of heat on a part ? We all know that the external use of spirits of wine is an ad- mirable remedy for a scald of the fingers — heat to cure heat. At first the pain is increased, but after a time it deadens, and passes away. How is this ? Simply be- cause at first the alcohol stimulated the part, and more especially its nerves ; but afterwards its sedative effect took place, and hence the sensation of relief. And as of the part, so of the system, in one sense. I am too hot, and I take alcoholics to "refresh" me. They sti- mulate my nervous system at first, and for a time, and so give temporary relief from the sensation of exhaus- tion. But then comes with certainty the reaction, the depression, the languor aggravated and augmented ; and the sedative result which was useful in the scald on the part, is prejudicial now on the system. The only escape from the otherwise inevitable evil would be, to take the stimulus in continued frequent repetition, as in fever, or collapse (p. 44) ; truly a most dangerous line of practice, and liable to a terrible consummation. But further: During labor with exposure to great heat, there is, on the one hand, much disintegration of tissue constantly going on, while, on the other, there being small need for combustion, so far as the production of heat is concerned, but little, comparatively, of what 140 alcohol: its power. ought to be consumed is so disposed of. The conse- quence is, that the combustible part of the food and the waste material of the blood tend to accumulate within the system. The accumulation of the latter, among other evils, induces a feeling of prostration and lassitude; and this feeling must, of course, be increased by what- ever tends to increase such accumulation. Now, that alcohol acts in this way is indisputable. It consumes itself, taking the place of the "waste," which it helps to make ; and thus must ultimately enhance rather than relieve the sensation of fatigue as well as its actual amount. In hot exposures — natural or artificial — let the work- ing man eat sparingly, especially of "the fat of the earth ;" and let him eschew alcohol as a " poison of the blood," which it really is. In any temperature we have seen it to be unsuitable as a refreshing beverage, in con- tinuance ; in a high temperature it is specially unsuit- able and unsafe. In India it is notorious that the " fast livers" are the soonest to die. Live temperately, and on suitable diet, as the native does, and you will bear the climate almost as well as he. But stuff the stomach with animal food like a Laplander, or swim it in alco- holics — like a Scotchman, shall I say ? — and then you will speedily become the victim of disease. Do both, and you may order your coffin when you please. But, says some one : " Look how the man sweats ! That loss must exhaust him, unless made up. Surely beer, porter, spirits and water, are good for that ?" Not at all. The sweat is but water, and let the leakage be supplied by water. As one function of the lungs is to IN RELATION TO ENDURANCE OP HEAT. 141 generate heat by intra-combustion, so one function of the skin is to moderate heat by moisture and evaporation on its surface — sweating. Now " evaporating lotions," made by alcoholics, are found to be very cooling and pleasant for external use ; but when the cooling agent has to be filtered from within, a more suitable material is required — and that is water. Men find this out for themselves, untaught — save by experience. A black- smith at his forge, a fireman at his engine, a glass-blower at his furnace, is drinking largely as he sweats profusely; but he is not taking alcoholics. Perhaps he is "a drinker," and cannot do without them altogether. But he reserves his dose as a bonne houche, till after he has got home; his work and sweating over for the day. During his sweating he swallows water, ginger-beer, lemonade, or some such simple drink — it may be almost in bucketfuls ; finding that these are suflScient, not only to meet the wants of his system, but to meet them more thoroughly and suitably than alcoholics would do. " But did you not say that water, taken beyond the demands of thirst, tends to accelerate the change of tissue (p. 63) ? and will not such draughts consequently exhaust the man, instead of refreshing him?" No. His state is peculiar. His thirst is great, and there is tolerance of the remedy. It will not be easy to exceed either. And if he did, his stomach and digestion will be left so free and unfettered as readily to make up the loss again, by good digestion waiting upon wholesome appetite. The unsuitableness of alcoholics in hot climates is borne ample testimony to by those most competent to 142 alcohol: its power. judge. No one will suspect the gallant Rajah of Sara- wak of being a " milksop," in the ordinary acceptation of the word. Yet he tells us that he is perfectly satis- fied of the necessity of abstinence in those who would successfully bear up against the danger and fatigue of such climates as that of Borneo. Dr. Jackson, too, a great authority in all matters connected with the hygiene of armies, has left his record thus : — " Personal expe- rience has taught me that the use of ardent spirits is not necessary to enable an European to undergo the fatigue of marching in a climate whose mean temperature is between 73° and 80°, as I have often marched on foot, and been employed in the operations of the field with troops in such a climate, without any other beverage than water and coffee." (On one occasion he marched 118 miles in four days, in Jamaica, carrying weight equal to that of a soldier's knapsack). " So far from their being calculated to assist the human body in en- during fatigue, I have always found that the strongest liquors were the most enervating -, and this m ivhatever quantity iliey were consumed." " My first voyage was to Jamaica," says Sir John Ross, R. N., "where the captain and several of the crew died. Excepting that I never drank any spirits, I took no care of myself. I exposed myself to the burning sun, slept on deck in the dew, and ate fruit, without feeling any bad efiects. I never tasted spirits ; and to this alone do I attribute the extra- ordinary good health I enjoyed." Lately, I had the advantage of conversing on this subject with the veteran Governor of Gambia; and it gives me much pleasure to adduce here his important testimony to the same efiect. IN RELATION TO ENDURANCE OP HEAT. 143 iTaving passed nearly twenty-seven years of his life in foreign service, " within the tropics, and frequently in the most unhealthy stations," he attributes the preserva- tion of his life and health, under God, mainly to this, that from the first he eschewed alcoholics and tobacco. A very large proportion of his comrades he has laid in the grave ; and he accounts for their predecease, not by any diflference in their constitution or service, but solely by the difference in their regimen. At first he tried both ways of it ; and on that account his evidence is all the more valuable. " In many arduous, extensive, and severe expeditions, I used solely tea as my beverage : and I always felt free from fever and thirst, well sus- tained, up to any work (even with the mercury 120° in the shade), and hard as a flint. But, on the contrary, when I used the usual * liquids imbibed by travellers in the tropics — brandy, or rum and water, pale ale, Barclay's XXX — I was invariably heated and thirsty, muscles relaxed, nerves irritable, temper ditto ; and what on other occasions constituted pleasing exertion, became more or less labor. Pluck, rivalry, or resolution, like the raven of Barnaby Budge, ' never to say die,' kept me up to the traces with an extra waste by tear and wear of the constitution. Besides, the dose of alcohol once freely used, must be frequently repeated, and increased in strength, else it loses, and that rapidly, its falsely stimulating qualities. I have known an officer not thirty — nay, twenty-five years old — commence with one * 'Strange, what a binding, blinding hold custom takes of rational men! "Usual!" That is the evil. 144 alcohol: its power. glass of brandy and water in the morning, and at last require one bottle (or rather consume it) of the pwre spirit, before noon." He then proceeds to an " unquali- fied assertion that tea in all tropical countries, and under all circumstances, is not only more safe and sanitary, but infinitely more sustaining than any other liquid." " I have served or lived in all the "West India colonies, and been in Africa too, and I never knew a dram-drinker, a soaker, a 'jolly trump' — be he of the military, medical, legal, commercial, or any other profession — long-lived, healthy, or always equal to the duties he was paid for and called upon to perform" With one more quotation from the gallant Colonel, I shall be satisfied ; bearing upon what may be considered a necessary deduction from what we have already con- sidered — viz., that alcohol is equally ineficctual in sud- den alternations of temperature, as in the extremes of either heat or cold. " In 1846," says he, " I joined a party that made the ascent of the Blue Mountain Peak, Jamaica — an elevation of 8000 feet above the level of the sea. After riding thirty miles, we commenced climbing up the last 2000 feet, and accomplished the task in three hours, forty minutes. There was no path or track sufficient to steady a goat ; we had to hold on by the trunks, branches, and roots of trees and plants, climbing up hand over hand, without relaxing our exer- tions until we reached the sunmiit. I indulged in cold tea; my friends, in libations of champagne, pale ale, porter, or brandy and water; and the result was, that the more they drank, the more thirsty they were. When we gained the peak, some reached it unable to enjoy the IN RELATION TO ENDURANCE OF HEAT. 145 romantic view; others flung themselves on the ground exhausted, declaring that if they were caught again ascending, why — no matter what. We remained the night, which proved bitterly cold ; the mercury faUing from 95° to freezing-point. I still continued constant to the China leaf; and next day made the descent fresher and more vigorous than any of the party, although I did lose what I could ill spare from my thin carcase — three pounds in twenty^four hours." Such testimony is surely conclusive. Yet I cannot forego the opportunity of adducing the authority of two other names — perhaps the most popular of the day. Livingstone, in all his African wanderings, has been a water drinker, on principle. In his last and greatest journey, he started with one bottle of brandy, as a medi- cine ; but it was accidentally broken to pieces within the first few days ; and its loss, even as physic, was not felt. The gallant, glorious Havelock was a water drinker, too. In his arduous campaigning, he knew the value of grog, sparingly and judiciously employed so as to help men to great exertions, on an emergency, when neither food nor rest can be obtained (p. 117). But on general principles he set his face against alcoholics in the army, and espe- cially in India — satisfied of their deeply injurious influ- ence on both the mind and body of the soldier. In his "Narrative of the War in Afighanistan," he tells us " that though Ghuznee was carried by storm, after a re- sistance stout enough to have roused the angry passions of the assailants, the Afighans were everywhere spared when they ceased to fight; and it is in itself a moral triumph exceeding in value and duration the praise of 10 146 alcohol: its power. the martial achievement of the troops, that in a fortress captured by assault, not the slightest insult was offered to one of the females found in the Zunanu within the walls of the citadel. This forbearance, and those sub- stantive proofs of excellent discipline, reflect more cre- dit on officers and men, than the indisputable skill and valor displayed in the operation. But let me not be accused of foisting in unfairly a favorite topic, or at- tempting to detract from the merit of the troops, when I remark in how great a degree the self-denial, mercy, and generosity of the hour, may be attributed to the fact of the European soldier having no spirit-ration since the 8th of July, and having found no intoxicating liquor amongst the plunder of Ghuznee. No candid man of any military experience will deny that the character of the scene in the fortress or citadel would have been far different if individual soldiers had entered the town primed with arrack, or if spirituous liquors had been discovered in the Affghan depots. Since, then, it has been proved that the troops can make forced marches of forty miles, and storm a fortress in twenty-five minutes, without the aid of rum, behaving, after success, with a forbearance and humanity unparalleled in history, let it not henceforth be argued that distilled spirits are an in- dispensable portion of a soldier's ration.^' X. The power of dlcoJiol to avert disease. Whatever lowers the condition of health, invites and favors the invasion of disease. And there is no more common cause of such depression, than the accumulation of waste material within the system. Indeed, this is not seldom IN AVERTING DISEASE. 147 itself a cause of disease of the most serious kind — ^fever, for example. Now alcohol, if it do not produce, must necessarily aggravate this condition j and, therefore, we cannot see how, when taken as a means of preventing disease, it can have any other effect than simply to favor its occurrence. Such is the voice of experience, espe- cially in hot climates, as can be readily understood. Even in this country, we have not far to go for facts. In hospitals, it is not the abstinent but the alcoholic nurses and attendants that are struck down by conta- gion. And when cholera is scourging the land, you may predicate as well as trace its progress, by reference to the sober or drunken habits of the people. In that hamlet, or household, who is the first victim? The drunkard. In that district, which is the spot most plague-stricken? That in which whisky is known to be most largely consumed. Of 70 male adults affected with cholera in an Edin- burgh hospital, in 1848, only 17, even according to their own account, had led tolerahly temperate lives. And of 140 females attacked by the disease, only 43 were reputed sober. Moreover, besides rendering the patient more liable to the attack, it reduces his power of enduring it when it comes. As to fever, for example. Dr. .Davidson has recorded a very significant fact — viz., that out of 370 cases, the death among the intemperate amounted to one-third of the whole ; among the temperate only to one-seventh. And Dr. Craigie states that out of thirty- one deaths from fever, in his hospital-wards, only two occurred in temperate persons. 148 alcohol: its power. Alcohol has no power of acting as a preservative against disease; nor can it even prevent decay — till we are dead. But people have been somehow led, very generally, into an opposite belief, and — what is worse — they resolutely act upon it. Here, possibly, is a way by which the error has crept in. In the morning we are, in one sense, weak ; refreshed by rest and sleep, no doubt ; but with an empty treasury, so far as nourish- ment is concerned. The stomach contains no food, and probably the last portion of chyle has passed up from the bowels. For some hours, perhaps, the blood has ceased to be fed, and the circulation is consequently weak; moreover, much of the combustible portion of the food has been burnt off, and the temperature in consequence is apt to fall low. To face exertion and fatigue in such a case were not wise ; and specially im- prudent would it be at the same time to encounter the chance of communicated disease — whether by infection, malaria, or otherwise. The natural and proper mode of meeting the difficulty would be, to breakfast forthwith. This is the right thing to do. But perhaps it is not convenient; or custom has arranged it otherwise. The laborer has to do his morning's " moil '' of work ; the student has to execute his early task ; the physician has to go his watchful round — and then to breakfast "with what appetite he may." But can nothing be done in the meanwhile? Is there no stop-gap? A crust of bread, a cupful of milk, or tea, or coffee, would answer well. But somehow that black bottle is always at hand, pushing itself forward as a substitute; and perhaps it has got some chamomile heads, or other herbs in it, to IN AVERTING DISEASE. 149 qualify it by the name of " bitters." A glass of that is taken ; the man feels comforted by it ; his ideas of " the congruity of things," too, are satisfied; and forth he sallies, protected at all hands, as he thinks, against every bodily calamity. Now, we do not assert that this "substitute" is in every case noxious. In an emer- gency, and when nothing else is to be had, it may be better than nothing. But when the right thing itself can be procured, the substitute must ever be inferior ; and the inferiority is special in this case, seeing that the substitute, by continuance, will prove not only noxious in other respects, but also diametrically opposed to the very object which we use it to obtain. The right thing is breakfast — food, not physic. The wise man takes his first regular meal, when it can be had, almost immediately after his toilet. The next best thing — breakfast being necessarily delayed — is the portion of food such as we have already named.* Attention to this simple matter, I am persuaded, will save oftentimes from ordinary disease ; and, moreover, will tend greatly to preserve men from the worst, and, alas, the most common, of all diseases — intemperance. " C'est le premier pas qui coute." It is this villanous alcoholic "morning" that is the first fatal step to many in their downward course of drunkenness. And here I * Europeans in India have been taught by experience the wisdom of such arrangement. Awaking at daylight, languid and weary, after probably a restless night, they have their chota-haaaaree, or small breakfast. Thus revived, they drive or walk out, employ them- selves in household affairs, or transact business ; and then, about nine o'clock, assemble to the regular morning meal. 150 alcohol: its power. would earnestly urge on all husbands, and especially on all wives, a simple domestic arrangement. The working- man, as he creeps out of his home, morning by morning, in cold winter, is perhaps shivery, dull, dispirited 3 un- comfortable, unwashed, unrubbed, he has huddled on his clothes, half consciously. His stomach is empty, and his energy is low. As he trudges along, a want is plainly felt within ; and the feeling of it becomes all the more palpable and painful, when passing that lurid light of the early publican.* His case has been considered for him; the 'licensed victualler" has most thoughtfully provided a " substitute " for his food ; and the poor man, by a kind of helpless instinct, trundles down the steps, and drinks his accustomed " morning " — as a silly moth circles in the flame, little dreaming that he is to be so cruelly scorched thereby. This is the beginning; we need not here tell the middle and the end. Well, to prevent all this, let a little coffee be made over night, and set past with a bit of bread and butter, and, if the finances will afford it, an egg. In the morning — how- ever early — the gas is lit; and on it is a simple tin arrangement for heating the coffee. By the time the man is washed f and dressed, the coffee is hot. Then let him swallow his egg raw, eat his bread and butter,J; * It's the early bird that catches the early worm," said a sage monitor to a little man who had overslept himself. "Yes," quaintly replied the yawning boy, " and what a fool was the worm to be up, so as to be in his way !" How painfully applicable is this well-known bit of humor to the case in question ! The early worm in this case> so easily and opportunely caught, is indeed a fool. f Washing is quite essential — and it implies rubbing. Vide "Labor Lightened, not Lost." I In winter, the butter should be tolerably thick. TO PRODUCE DISEASE. 151 and drink his coffee. This is a good small breakfast ; it will keep him warm and comfortable; he will feel no want of the morning dram ; he will be able to snap his fingers at his considerate friend, the publican ; and after some hours of hard work, he will return to a comfortable meal, both less fatigued and less prone to disease than he otherwise would be. This is the optimism of the thing. But if we cannot get all, let us have at least an instalment. If there be no egg, let us have the bread, butter, and coffee; if no butter, let us have the rest; if neither butter nor bread, let us still have the coffee ; and, alone though it be, it is worth a thousand of the alcoholic "mornings." There is no excuse for with- holding this simple arrangement. The wife need not bestir herself at all in the morning — unless she choose;* the gas must be lit at all events; the little heating apparatus may be had for a few pence, and, once there, it will last a lifetime ; while the expense of the coffee is not greater, if so great, as that of the noxious " sub- stitute." XI. The power of alcoJiol to produce disease. — With less than no power to avert disease, though with con- siderable power, when given medicinally, in suitable circumstances, to modify and restrain it, the power of ajcohol to produce disease, when taken unnecessarily and in excess, is all but incalculable. Who has not * Nay, there is no need for a wife at all, for the matter of that. A bachelor can carry through the whole transaction by himself quite well. Only a wife does it more handily ; and a very good wife, so far from grudging the trouble, will take a pride in " this labor of love." 152 alcohol: its power. stood amazed at the impudence of the quack, who un- blushingly advertises his nostrum, warranting it to cure all, or nearly all, the diseases that flesh is heir to? Alcohol were no quack were it to claim an equal power ; not, indeed, in the way of cure, but in the way of pro- duction. " Methinks it doth protest too much V " Nay — but it will keep its word," Diseases of the brain, of the lungs, of the heart and arteries, of the stomach and bowels, of the liver, of the kidneys, of the skin ; gout and rheumatisms; dropsies; palsies; scrofula; premature decay; general poisoning; delirium, epilepsy, fatuity, madness — these are but a part of the long black list that might in sad and sober truth be enumerated, as more or less directly caused by alcohol. This is neither the time nor the place for entering upon detail in regard to this. We assert the fact, and defy its contradiction : — There is no one cause of dis- ease, in this country, one-half so prolific as alcohol. And Pandora, as she numbers and estimates the numerous progeny of her box, may well fondle this one especially — " Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou ex- cellest them all." And the worst of it is, that the disease so induced does not terminate with the life of him or her who pro- duced it. If, unhappily, children be born, they will inherit the evil of their progenitors : stunted in body, and often in mind ; * fatuous, or foolish ; drink-loving, * According to Dr. Howe, in his report on idiocy to the Legislature of Massachusetts — "The habits of the parents of 300 of the idiots were learned; and IAS, or nearly one-half , are reported as 'known to be habitual drunkards.' " IN CHERISHING OLD AGE. 153 and drunken, in their turn ; scrofulous, rheumatic, con- sumptive, weak, useless. This is one of the punishments of sin in the present life, which may in sad bitterness be traced downward from parent to child — "iniquity of the fathers visited upon the children, and upon the children's children,'^ even "unto the third and fourth generation."* XII. The power of alcohol to cherish old age. " The old man's milk I" This is one of the many aliases that alcohol trades under. " By all means," say many, " keep strong drink from the lad and the boy — ' corn is not for staigs ; ' but the grown man, if he be discreet, may take at least a little with impunity; and for the old man, a cordial is absolutely necessary ] it rouses the feeble heart, and warms the chill limbs, and ever and anon helps the ebbing tide to flow again." Very plausible, and very pretty ! Unfortunately, it is not true. The life of the old man is a quiet, reduced, gentle affair ; with none of the tumult of youth, and none of the energy of middle age. The machinery is well-nigh worn out ; all is feeble, and parts are wanting, or but ill repaired. The play of a strong and sudden steam-power would now be very dangerous. All is well arranged by nature; and all would be well, comparatively, were we but content with the arrange- ment. The engine is crank and weak, but little coke is taken in, but little steam is generated, yet the piston * Dr. Livingstono tells us that consumption, scrofula, stone, are quite unknown in Central Africa. Is this happy immunity connected with the absence of alcoholics that reigns there ? 154 alcohol: its power. plays pretty well in its own weak way. " But no," says the wiseacre, as he rudely pokes the fire, "the coke must be made to burn more brightly, and more must be shovelled on ; the working power must be increased, for we cannot bear to see the wheels revolve so leisurely"-— down-hill, and steep in the gradient, though the tram- way be. The old man's appetite is small, because he needs but little food ; little food is needed, because he is not in- tended for much work ; the little work he does, produces more or less disintegration of tissue ; and the feebleness of his circulation, and breathing, and power of excre- tion, make it difficult for him to work off the " waste," such as it is. Yet, with prudence, a tolerable adjust- ment may be maintained ; and such is nature's arrange- ment for the evening of our days. But you say : " No. "We must have the bright light of morning, if not the flash of noon — if not always, at least now and then." An alcoholic cordial will stimulate the appetite, more food will be taken, and then "Ay, there's the rub :" What then? That the food is not digested; or if it be, in part, it hampers the blood with what it cannot manage; the nervous system is roused to call an action from the various organs which they cannot bear; and the alcohol, oxidating in the lungs, shuts up the " waste " in a very dangerous accumulation. No wonder that the old man is in consequence made liable to apoplexy, and conges- tion of the brain ; to palpitations and angina; to wheezing asthma, and bronchitis ; to heart-burn and indigestion ; to jaundice and bilious attacks; to gout and gravel; to IN CHERISHING OLD AGE. 155 troublrci of the skin ; or to some sudden and great cala- mity fr^m a plurality of morbid causes combined. Look at the old man's leg. A wasted, shrivelled thing; the bone's edge as sharp as a knife, the skin loose as the pantaloon, the muscles flabby and weak. When the man is up, what say you to galvanising it by some powerful battery, so that it may disport itself, at least occasionally, as if in the leaps and gambols of its youth? Would not success imply great danger of a break-down ? Rupture of muscle or tendon, or fracture of bone ? And yet what is absurd and mischievous on the part, you would bring to bear on the whole system ! By your alcoholic stimulus you would seek to jerk the poor old man into a convulsive and paroxysmal imitation of his younger days, the least injurious effect of which must be exhaustion, and acceleration of general decay. So much for his body : what of his mind ? That is intended for no adventitious stimulus such as alcohol's. It is evening-tide with him, and the light should be sub- dued, yet clear. He has accounts to settle, his house to set in order; he has a long way to go soon, and he would see clearly at least the path's beginning; he has to com- mune much with himself, much with those around him, and most of all with his Grod. He would be calm and composed as he approaches nearer and nearer to the solemn interview, face to face, with the yet Unseen but Not Unknown, and the then Judge of All. And what do you with this " cordial ?'' Do you not reflect that it has a special action on the brain, exciting, yet pervert- ing ? Rousing imagination, with which the old man has little now to do, for it is stern reality that is both beside 156 alcohol: i- ter being of course a fair average of " temperate " men. These two branches — abstinent and temperate — have been in parallel operation for about seven years; and the result is nineteen per cent, in favor of the former.* Or let him step from the civil into the military depart- ment ; and referring to the government returns regard- ing the mortality of troops in India, he will find these troops arranged in three classes — abstinent, temperate, intemperate — with their respective mortalities as follows : abstinent, 11 in the 1000 ; temperate, 23 in the 1000 ; intemperate, 44 in the 1000. XIV. The power of alcohol to affect the mind. — This is undeniably great ; but is it for weal or for woe ? Recall what has been already said upon this subject; and for the convenience of further illustration, divide the mental condition into these four parts : — 1, the intellect; 2, the will, the governing and controlling power; 3, the moral emotions; 4, the animal passions and desires. * In a private note, the resident director says : " The bonus in the temperance section was just 19 per cent, more than in the general section. I find that in the years 1855 and 1856 the amount paid on account of claims in the temperance department was considerably less than was paid in the general section ; that is, comparing the receipts and disbursements for claims in the two sections. It is true, the claims in the general section were unusually heavy in 1855, but I have put the two years together. In the temperance section, we paid in the two years less than one-third of the amount received. lu the general section, we paid £12,305 out of £26,912, which is not much less than half ! These figures apply to the whole life-policies only, and give a decided advantage to the temperance section." TO AFEECT THE MIND. 159 Now, the well-ascertained effect of alcohol, when taken in any considerable quantity, is to stimulate No. 1, espe- cially so far as the imaginative and ideal powers are con- cerned; to depress No. 2; to pervert and depress No. 3;* and to excite and intensify No. 4. In a larger dose, No. 1 is thoroughly perverted ; Numbers 2 and 3 are extinct ; and No. 4 is in the ascendant. With a larger dose still, the distorted remnant of No. 1 may hardly be recognised, while No. 4 reigns paramount, in unnatural excess. The evil desire of lust or revenge often re- mains, while the paralyzed body refuses to minister to its gratification. A pitiable spectacle indeed ! Verily it is no stretch of language to say that drunkenness places man on a level with the brute ! The language falls short of truth. He digs beneath that deep a lower deep, and in this the brutified man wilfully lies down and wallows. f Such are undeniably the effects of alcohol in consider- * The Rev. Dr. Hitchcock, of Amherst College, testifies that one of the decided results of his abstaining from wine was " the power of determining, with greater accuracy, the nature of the religious emotions;" while the Hon. Judge Brewster states — "From experience and observation, I believe that the use of fermented drinks is one of the most potent agencies in paralyzing the life of active piety and holy obedience." •j- "A dram-drinker! Faugh, faugh!" says Christopher North. " Look over, lean over, that stile, where a pig lies wallowing in the mire — and a voice, faint and feeble, and far off, as if it came from some dim and remote world within your lost soul, will cry, that of the two beasts, that bristly one, agrunt in sensual sleep, with its snout snoring across the husk-trough, is, as a physical, moral, and intellee- tual' being, superior to you — dram-drinker, drunkard, dotard, and self-doomed." 160 alcohol: its power. able and large doses. Taken in smaller quantity, the effects are less marked, but have still the same tendency. There is moral as well as mental loss; injury as to what the man is, with serious peril to what he ought to he. Moreover, let it be remembered that the effect accumu- lates by frequent repetition, and that no dose of alcohol, however small, can be taken without acting on the brain, and consequently we believe on the mind, more or less. The ultimate result of such actings we have seen to be, in extreme cases, delirium, fatuity, insanity; mental disease. In the more protracted and chronic cases, in- tellectual perversion, animal ascendency, moral abase- ment; mental degradation and decay.* A man begins fairly, and continues respectable for a time. At first his indulgences are only convivial, and within moderate bounds. These bounds, however, are by and by transgressed — once and again. And after no long time, it too frequently happens that the love of, and dependence on, the unnatural stimulus have become too strong to wait for the social opportunity and social restraint. The drink is taken for its own sake, and secretly. The power of the drag is gone ; and the down- ward movement is precipitate. " There is a difference, no doubt," says Paley, "between convivial intemperance, * " The habit of using any intoxicating liquor," says the Rev. Dr. Leonard Woods, the great American divine, " tends to inflame all that is depraved and earthly, and to extinguish all that is spiritual and holy. It is a poison to the soul, as really as to the body." It is a truth, though from the mouth of Mohammed, that alcohol, is a "mother of sins." AS AN INSTRUMENT OF VICE. 161 and that solitary sottishness which waits neither for com- pany nor invitation. But the one^ I am afraid, commonly ends in the other; and this last is the basest degradation to which the faculties and dignity of human nature can be reduced." The tendency J as stated by the philosopher, I can from my own observation amply confirm. Many have I seen engulfed, who never dreamt of danger. "Ah, so and so is done for," I have often heard a bon-vivant say; " he has taken to brandy in the forenoon, and when a man does that all is over with him." These same men — quick to see the mote that was in their brother's eye, but blind to the beam in their own — I have seen, after but a short time, clutching their brandy bottle, morn- ing, noon, and night — hopeless drunkards. "Look not thou on the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last, it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." And this brings us naturally to consider the power of alcohol under another and larger heading. XV. The 'power of alcohol as an instrument of vice. — Of course, our present limits prevent anything but the merest sketch of this vast and terrible subject. That alcohol, in its various forms, is largely used for vicious purposes, or at least with vicious effect, is too well known to all. The reason why, it is not difficult to understand. The first efi'ects of alcohol are pleasurable, and to many minds in all ranks of life intensely so ; it is their favorite sensual indulgence ; and ' — assuming a virtue which they have not — they are ready to " com- 11 162 alcohol: its power. pound " for this one sin which they are specially '' in- clined to/' " by damning those they have no mind to." The advanced effects, on the other hand — when moral sense and self-control are gone, and excited animal pas- . sion reigns supreme — afford a grosser gratification to ^' lewd fellows of the baser sort." Besides — and mainly — in both parties there is the evil nature, or unrenewed man, at the bottom of all the mischief, prompting to self- indulgence and sin ; and on every side, all around him, there are special temptations, " thick as leaves in Val- lambrosa ;" with evil custom varnishing and toning down the whole. Man's evil nature originates and maintains a desire, the gratification of which pleases the grosser sense ; the all but universal use of the agent of evil, with the marvellous frequency of the extension of this to what is base and sinful, gives a cloak of commonness and con- ventionality; and the result is, that the whisperings of conscience, as well as the teachings of sad experience, are overborne and set at nought. The young are lured on by little and little ; all but imperceptibly they wander further and further from the path of temperance and virtue; the quicksands of sensuality lay fast hold of their palsied limbs; the fiend binds them at his will, slowly but securely; and, ere they are aware, they have become the bond slaves of intemperance. This is the consummation of Satan's favorite scheme for thwarting man's redemption. By a lie he does it, as of old he compassed his fall. " It is good for food (?), it is pleasant to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise." " Ye shall not surely die." " Your eyes shall be opened, and AS AN INSTRUMENT OF VICE. 163 ye shall be as gods." It is his master-piece of villany; he slays both body and soul. Subdivide, once more, the effects of alcohol, and its poioer as a producer of crime becomes very plain. 1. In moderate dose, the imagination is at once quickened and let loose, the animal propensities are roused, and self-control is impaired. This state obviously disposes to the indulgence of lust, whether of a sensual or cove- tous kind. It is favorable to uncleanness and theft. 2. In a larger dose the animal is more roused still; reason is perverted, if not actually injured; moral perception and restraint fall low; and, the power of control weak- ening rapidly, the man is much at the mercy of the worse and baser passions. Hence anger and contention ; riot- ing and revenge ; assaults and housebreakings ; and all premeditated villany.* 3. Increase still the dose. Then all is more untoward ; and the man, beside himself, be- comes more and more dangerous, so long as the brain remains in any degree subservient to his sordid sense, or the muscles obedient to his wayward will. Now he is ripe for sudden bloodshed, murder, rape. The tiger is not more savage than the man thus made a monster. Nay, the tiger is the better creature of the two, inas- much as he follows the instinct of his peculiar nature, and in his savageness seeks but to satisfy a troublesome hunger, in the way which to him seems perfectly legiti- * "When Bishop and his partner," says Sir Benjamin Brodie, " murdered the Italian boy, in order that they might sell his body, it appeared in evidence that they prepared themselves for the task hy a plentiful libation of gin. The same course is pursued by house- breakers, and others, who engage in desperate criminal undertakings." — Psi/chological Researches. 164 alcohol; its power. mate. In the estimate of his fellows, he would be placed in the same category with a man fishing, or making a good bag by means of his gun. For a human being, transformed by drunken debauch into a fiend, we must look for a truer analogue than can be found among the beasts of prey. He is, as the law rates him, " volunta- rius demon " — by his own act a devil. The deed of violence past, he may scarce remember it ; and in one sense he may be said to have ceased to be responsible. But he cannot escape the guilt of having induced, wil- fully and wantonly, this brutal charge; and, as has been well said by Dr. "Wilson, in this view drunkenness may be itself regarded as a capital crime. 1. On the individual, the eiFect of vicious alcoholic indulgence is disease of the body, as we have seen. Sooner or later, it must come. Intemperance cannot dwell in a sound frame; at least, it never does. Disease of the mind, too, is not far ofi". It may be delirium or insanity, temporary or confirmed ; or it may stop short of that, resting at senile drivelling, and childish folly. The moral sense is blunted;* and the better part of man sustains both degradation and decay. The soul is dying ; and, if grace restrain not, will soon be dead — forever. *■ Ultimately, the man becomes a moral idiot The moral principle is not only lessened, but absolutely extinct — eaten out, as color is by acid. But two days since, in visiting a young man, well born and of high connections, become a drunkard, with one breath he assured me of his being a man of honor and a gentleman, and with the next told me a deliberate falsehood. To such, indeed, lying, cheating, stealing come quite naturally : they have no perception of either the sin or the shame. ASAN INSTRUMENT OF VICE. 165 One day, at a railway station, when passengers were congregating in groups, before the starting of a train, my attention was attracted to a tall middle-aged man, who was slowly making his way to lean against a pillar. His dress, evidently once black and reputable, was soiled, and torn, and covered with mud. His limbs were bent and tottering ; his hands hung loosely by his side, and shook like aspens. His face was haggard and pale — or rather would have looked so, but for the dirt it bore ; unwashed, unshaven ; a brown rivulet of snuff massing the upper lip, and trickling down the chin ; the eyes fixed, and of a glassy stare, with the eyelids half closed ; the jaw dropped, the mouth open, and slavering like an idiot's. His hat — muddy, and crushed, and awry — was fixed, hard and low, upon his crouching head and shoulders. His shoes were brown and broken. He might be sixty; he might be forty; all too plainly he was a drunkard, seeking a country home, after wallow- ing for at least one night in the city's mire. Something told me that he was no stranger; many years must have passed since I had seen him ; but in a few minutes me- mory carried me through all his antecedents. I remem- bered him a university student, of almost the same age and standing with myself; the gayest of the gay, in heart and disposition; gentle, loving, kind; studious, too, and talented. I remembered him licensed to preach the gospel ; popular, respected, devoted. I remembered him settled down in a country charge; married, the father of a hopeful family, the centre of a loving circle, the pastor of an attached flock. Then came the dark cloud. He had always been of social habits, and lie 166 alcohol: its power. had indulged them ; through indulgence the power of drink had crept upon him unawares ; and now, with a bound, it took him by the throat, and held him down. I remembered to have heard strange rumors about that manse; there had been surmises, even among his distant friends, of a sad fall there ; and news had come one day, like a thunder-clap, of drunkenness, and delirium, and deposition. That was long since; and the sad story had faded greatly from my recollection. But here he stood , a fearful proof and concentration of it all. His body that of a paralysed idiot, at least for the time ; his mind sunk to nothingness ; his soul — and the souls of his people — what of them ? Alas ! alas ! these shaking helpless hands of his are stained with the blood of souls committed to his care — himself a hopeless castaway. Yes, the power of alcohol, in vice, is terrible. Its bursting is like that of a shell; annihilating the object struck, and in many fragments dealing death and de- struction far and near. 2. On the family. What does it here ? Dirt, dis- order, discord are its first fruits. Go through that ham- let, and you may tell off the drunken from the sober by attending merely to their outward estate. That white- washed window; the ivy, honeysuckle, or woodbine climbing up its side ; the well-trained rose, or humble daisy, in the garden-plot ; the door well swept, and the floor all clean ; the table shining, and the fire burning bright; the well-filled pot boiling apace, or simmering happily; the bed made smooth, and the tidy coverlet without a wrinkle ; the housewife herself trig, and neat, singing and smiling, and busy still with her broom or AS AN INSTRUMENT OF VICE. 167 brusli — tliese are no marks of drunkenness. Look for their counterparts, and you will find it there. And with it much other bitter fruit ; crimination and recrimination; scolding, swearing, woe, and weeping; red eyes and black eyes ; broken heads and broken char- acters; cold, and no fire; hunger, and no food; children, but no comforts-flying, straying, stealing ; sickness, and no sympathy; debt, and no credit; disease, death, the grave — and no hope beyond. Poor drunkard ! — " Your friends avoid you ; brutishly transform'd, They hardly know you ; or if one remains To wish you well, he wishes you in heaven. Despised, unwept, you fall." And what brought this dismal brood of evils into the family? The bottle. It came, called, "looked in," as Vi friend! Fathers and mothers! husbands and wives! what think you of a neighbor that^ under the pretence of friendship, worms himself into your home, and, setting you by the ears, breaks your peace for ever; stealing this, and breaking that, leaves your floor and walls bare, your hearth empty; blackening your character, and burning your self-respect, beggars you ; luring you on to perpe- tration of grossest sin, laughs as he sees you sell your soul for nothing; and not done with you yet, sticks to your offspring, and haunts them through the world as drunkard's brats I His "power" is terrible; resist it with all your might, — and — here is the secret of success — from the beginning. 3. On the community at large. — Taxes and public bur- 168 alcohol: its power. dens of all kinds accumulate j penitentiaries and prisons grow full; judges and jailors are overworked; idleness, ignorance, poverty, crime, spread like a pestilence ; dis- ease doubles its victims, and grave-digging grows a thriving trade ; the country is bleeding at every pore, from many an inward wound 3 and in their own persons her sons and daughters are parting with both the bulk and the bravery of former times. There is a hale and hearty centre yet, thank God ; but it is being sorely pressed and put to. Sober industry must redouble its labor, that drunken sloth may live and fester. And worse remains behind. Nations have no here- after, and their sin meets its guerdon now. A nation of drunkards may well tremble, knowing that " the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.^^ XYI. The power of alcoliol to resist arid neutralize the gospel. — That such power exists, in great intensity, ne- cessarily follows from what has gone before. The gospel, being the true agent of man's elevation and reform, is opposed bitterly and unceasingly by the Enemy of man. He seeks to thwart it in every way; and in his expe- rience he seems to have found intemperance the most effective of all his hellish antidotes. Look to China. ^^As shown by Mr. Matheson, in his excellent pamphlet, when did opium enter that country? When the gospel came. Men sought to introduce the Bible, and Satan took care that intemperance by opium should accompany it. And where does drunkenness most prevail? In those European countries, generally speaking, where the IN ATTACHING ITSELF TO ITS VICTIM. 169 Bible is most free. Not that Christianity produces drunkenness ; not that true Christianity is open to the allegation by the heathen of being synonymous with drunkenness; but because Satan takes care always to accompany the Bible with strong drink, as its antidote, to neutralize its effects.* While the Son of Man, by his Spirit, sows the good seed, Satan comes behind and sows his cruel tares." f XVII. The 'power of alcohol in attaching itself to its victim — the last, but not the least, in our enumeration. The speckled boa winds itself slowly round the hapless antelope, breaks all his bones, . beslimes the body with his tongue, and swallows it at leisure. So does alcohol with man. The foolish fellow thinks that he is consum- ing the whisky; all the while the whisky is consuming him. Or, rather, the seducer is as some fiend, in fairest form of woman, who with blandishment and smile lures on the silly one. "With her much fair speech she causeth him to yield, with the flattering of her lips she forces him. He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks; till a dart strikes through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life." Her arms, once around him, will scarce let go their hold. At first she leads him gently, in dance, and gaiety, and enjoyment; their way is among flowers, and * " Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The devil always builds a chapel there." And the devotion he most favors is that at the shrine of the publican, t Speech in Free General Assembly, 1857. 170 alcohol: its poaver. green meadows, and pleasant groves ; but as tliey whirl faster on, the sky darkens, the road grows rugged ; there are briers and thorns, and dismal swamps, and dreary wastes. Now he is alarmed, and struggles to be free. Violence, reproach, supplication, are all in vain. The hold grows tighter, and the giddy pace still mends. The night is darkening now 3 and there are strange sounds and gloamings in the air. Other cold hands are on him; and other voices whisper venom in his ears. The yawning gulf is nigh at hand; and another power than man's alone can save him. CONCLUSION. Such is our estimate of the place and power of alcohol. Gathering up the points of the imperfect sketch, let us look them in the face. And though, once more, repeti- tions may offend the fastidious, not a few perhaps may think, with me, such reiteration warranted ; satisfied that nothing save repeated blows can break this hard crust of custom.* Alcohol is a poison ; potent and pernicious. To whom are we to give it ? The ordinary and legitimate use of poisons, as such, is to destroy life that is noxious. Kats and mice are slaughtered thus, in a useful way, by arsenic ; and game-keepers find strychnine very effectual in removing "vermin." But these lower animals are * I know well enough that there are unseemly, if not unnecessary, repetitions in the preceding pages. My apology is, that the whole has been written in patches and portions — not continuously; and I have aimed at practical usefulness in the matter, rather than polish in the manner or style. CONCLUSION. 171 too wise in their day and generation to be cauglit with alcohol. They repudiate it. Sweeten and disguise it as you may, iliey turn from what man at first takes, if not readily, at least willingly, and afterwards comes to devour with greediness. Learning industry from the ant, and providence from the bee, he may from these others take a lesson in dietetics, and be "wise." Whom shall I poison ? Not myself. For there is a mandate that I dare not break — " Do thyself no harm I" Not others — " Thou shalt not kill ! " What shall we do with it, then ? Use it, like other poisons, in small quantities and medicinally. Alcohol is a medicine; powerful and often precious. When the exigencies of nature struggling against dis- ease require its help, it does good service under skilful regulation. But, like other strong remedies imported from the poison class, it needs careful watching, both as to the dose and its continuance ; and it needs, still more, a judicious estimate of the circumstances which seem to demand its aid. If right in your diagnosis, you may give the drug freely, yet with care ; satisfied that the law of tolerance will bear you safely through. You will tell upon the disease favorably; and you will not hurt the system either now or hereafter. But err in your diagnosis, and be at once lavish and lax in your dosing, then nothing but evil can follow. The disease will be aggravated ; and, the law of tolerance becoming adverse, you risk and may ruin the system that you seek to save. Remember that this medicine, like opium, when given or continued unnecessarily, even in moderate dosing, has a dangerous and seductive tendency to lay hold of the 172 alcohol: its power. frame ; refusing to let it go — inasmuch as it has itself engendered a morbid necessity for the continuance of its use. The skilful practitioner is distinguished from the unskilful, in nothing more than in knowing when to stop as well as when to begin his remedies. Remember, still more, that alcohol, far beyond any other drug, has an effect on mind and soul : harmless, when the body requires its careful and regulated use ; most pernicious when given without necessity and with- out control. Let patients beware of two things : 1. How they take this and other strong remedies at their own hands. 2. How they permit themselves to fall into the habit of un- necessarily depending upon the adventitious aid of any drug whatever. The stomach is a culinary stew-pan, not a pharmaceutical mortar, far less a laboratory. A system of constant pill-pilling is bad enough, even when the things swallowed are nothing worse than " Framp- ton's," "Cockle's," "Morison's," or "Parr's." But if the wilful valetudinarian, tired of simples, comes to a daily dabbling in arsenic, nux vomica, or such like, his state is all the more perilous. The system of " drugging" among members of the medical profession is very much given up; it ought to be wholly abandoned by the laity. Let them beware of giving drugs unnecessarily, either to themselves or others ; and to this end let them take some pains to know what the jpros and cons of the com- moner medicines are : when they may do good, and when they may or must be hurtful. " My Lady Bountiful often does great harm, unthinkingly. Some one is re- puted sick ; and instantly a servant is despatched with a CONCLUSION. 173 bottle of sherry or port wine, witli a request to know if brandy is required." * There is a common notion abroad that alcohol is the only true panacea; and that, for the emergency at least, and until more regular aid arrives, there is no casualty, by accident or disease, in which al- coholics, in some, or any form, may not be helpful to keep life in. " Freedom and whisky gang thegether," madly shouted Scotland's poet. " Sickness and brandy gang thegether," as madly say Scotland's people — " Tak aff your dram ! " This is one of the " vulgar errors '' which it is most needful to put down ; founded on gross ignorance, and fraught with utmost risk. The "dram" must be " taken aff" — but in another sense than Burns dreamt of. Let alcohol be limited to its original use. When first brought into the world, in its concentrated form, during the eleventh century — and they were "good old times," in one material sense, that passed without it — it was used exclusively as a medicine. Under the pretentious title of " aqua vitae," it was doled out by the physician in small and guarded quantities to the sick ; and, pro- bably, in many cases, was not without its healing vir- tues. Would that it had continued thus — with some just claim to be esteemed the friend, and not the enemy of life If Let men know what it is, and what it can do; let them * Speech in the Free General Assembly, 1857. f Is "aqua" alcohol? Yes; "aqua fortis." "Aqua vitae" once; Now "aqua mortis." 174 alcohol: its power. forbear to seek from it what it cannot give ; and let them cease to substitute it for what it is not. Alcohol is not food. Instinct does not make it so. The child, like the animal, turns from it with disgust. Food satisfies; alcohol breeds thirst, and appetite; it beguiles the stomach into a craving that is unsatiable, till both sense and reason reel ; the frame, even when saturated, is not satisfied, but like the daughter of the horse-leech, still cries, " Give ! give ! " It is not food in any sense appreciable to common sense. Let it not be used as food. It cannot nourish or give strength; it can only stimulate. It cannot give working power ; it can only hurry the expenditure of what you already have; and, further, it hampers and opposes you in getting that store renewed. It has the faculty of generating heat, but in an evil way — preventing the legitimate and natural process, which would do the work better; while, besides, it leaves a noxious product behind, altogether unatoned for, and uncompensated. It is useful as a calorific only on emergency. If I am exposed to great cold, if I have no food, or if I perceive a necessity for speedily raising the temperature of my body before the digestion of food, now taken, can have opportunity to bring its calorific power into play — then alcohol is useful. I use it accordingly; but with no in- tention of continuance. When my food has become digested, the need for alcohol is past; and, if taken then, it will do harm. In future, I will try and arrange matters so that the necessity for alcohol, by such emer- gency, shall not arise. With food and clothing — put in CONCLUSION. 175 and put on in time — I am content to meet the intensest cold that alcohol can set its face to. In a warm climate, alcohol can never be of service, except in purely medicinal use; and even thus the tropical practitioner will find but little occasion for its services. While the man that uses it daily, and freely, as food, is literally with both his hands knocking nails into his coffin. But there as well as here — though mainly here — people seem firmly set in the belief that alcohol is food, and may with all propriety be used accordingly; setting even such free and easy limits to their " moderation " as admit and imply "occasional" excess. The result is disastrous — in broken healths, broken characters, broken fortunes, and broken souls. Drunkenness is the scourge of our land. And the main secondary cause of its spread most certainly seems to be the false dietetic and domestic place of alcohol. Undo this fatal error ; put back this perilous drug whence it came — into the medi- cine-chest and laboratory; and then I believe a master- stroke will have been achieved in favor of temperance, and all its happy fruits.* * The jolly squire " who ate well, slept well, walked well, felt well — and that was all," told us that he had never taken a dose of medi- cine in all his life, but once ; and that was to oblige a nephew who had set up in the neighboring town as a druggist. Let men take a lesson from the squire. So long as they keep — and would keep — the evidences of health he mentions, let them avoid physic — of every kind, and more especially of this kind; and if their connections in life render it at any time expedient for them to bestow a little patron- age on the alcohol-vender, it is not needful that they should swallow the purchase. In short, let strong drink be actually what it ought to be — "a drug in the market." 176 alcohol: its power. To this end let me adjure you^ gentle reader — in the name and in the cause of perishing millions — not only to give assent to such doctrine as this, but openly and fearlessly to act upon it, forthwith and always. Those who have grown old in the absurd custom of the time will find a difficulty in suddenly making a change. • Let them at least modify what they may not move. And warned by their own condition of partial enslavement, let them do what they may to deter fol- lowing. Grown men have no such drawback, when yet in the prime and vigor of their days. Their systems will have to sustain no dangerous shock ; and their strength will be all the better for the shifting. The young are adjured to consider at once their privi- lege and responsibility. They have no difficulty in not learning what others paid hard to unlearn. " Leading" not themselves " into temptation," they may look with confidence to Him who alone can "deliver" them "from evil." Alcohol is a luxury, in one sense, no doubt. Its first effects *are pleasurable j and to some frames intensely so. But its tendencies, even in truly " moderate " allowance, are alioays evil. These tendencies may be successfully resisted, and often are, through strength of principle, and manly self-control. But in how many a goodly frame is not the progress steadily onward and down- ward ? And who can tell when the restraint which now hinders may snap in twain ? The terrible characteristic of this luxury is its insidious power. With the subser- viency of a slave it twines itself around you, obeying all CONCLUSION. 177 your commands, and ministering in every way to your comfort and happiness — for a time; but feeling its hold secure, it suddenly rebels, and, laying you prostrate, tramples you in the mire. The rise and revenge of the cruel and cowardly sepoy is not more fiendish than that of your former slave. There is no indignity, no torture of body and mind, to which it may not in hellish inge- nuity subject you J ending with that mightiest massacre of all, beyond the power of any mere assassin — destruc- tion of the crushed and broken soul. Why is it that men will love, and live on, that which they ought above all things else to fear — that to which is given the power, not only to kill the body, but also to cast both body and soul into hell ? Why will men carry and cherish that in their bosom which at the last stingeth like an adder? No man is safe. I have seen those at whose feet I had been life-long content to sit, to learn both wisdom and piety, drawn gently on, tempted, bound, enslaved ; men not long before eminent for worth and goodness, now secret tipplers, or drunkards but ill disguised ; once honored to bear the message of " good news " to many, and now themselves poor " castaways." This " luxury" — this " something separate" from food — this "dainty" — this thing "delightful to the senses" — is not safe for me — whatsoever and whosoever I am. I way remain its master; but it may become mine : arid if it do, I am lost — or at least in utmost peril. Why should the oak court the embrace of the ivy, if it know or even fear that the sycophant, as it creeps and clings around, will in the end suck all its sap, and leave it to 12 178 alcohol: ITS POWER. die a faded, withered thing, fit only as a fagot for the burning ? And why should men, themselves safe — for the time — lead others on by the most powerful of all teaching — namely, example — to dalliance with this drug, when they see thousands so led perishing miserably and for ever? Let honest men but think — opening their intellects as well as their hearts ; and surely they will be forced to abstain from what is certainly something more — far more — than a mere " appearance of evil." There is a time for its use. Let its use be limited to that time. All else is abuse ; for which there is no time and no tole- rance. It is then a positive evil, and of the highest and most heinous kind. Let men learn its power, and act wisely on that learn- ing. Let them know and remember that it has vast power as a poison — to be dreaded by all who would live and let live ; great power too as a medicine — in small quantities, and skilfully employed; much power as a luxury, but of a most perilous kind ; no power as food, save only in occasional emergencies ) no power to sustain or even refresh a man, under either bodily or mental labor — 'and let them abolish the term " refreshments" in its ordinary alcoholic sense, as a most foul and fallacious misnomer ; no power to afford continued and systematic protection against extremes of either cold or heat; no power to avert disease, but power almost infinite to pro- duce it ; no power to cherish old age, but only to cripple and confound it; no power to prolong life, but power to both hasten and embitter its ending; no power to CONCLUSION. 179 strengthen the morals or the mind, but power to debase, if not destroy the one, and weaken and pervert the other ; a power to produce crime, and minister to vice, beyond what pen can write or tongue can tell — " sen- sual, devilish." Let them know such power — and /ear it. The proper PLACE of alcohol for man's use is as a medicine. Let men put and keep it there. Its power then is both great and good. Let them regard it no longer as an article of ordinary diet; for wholesome real food it is not, and power as such it has none. Let them beware of it as a luxury; for though its power as such be great, it is often grievous. And, looking to the exigencies of the present time, let them resolve, in God's strength and in God's name, to deny themselves what to the man in health is but a doubtful luxury at the best, and is shown by sad experience rather to become " a mockery, a delusion, and a snare.'* " Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging ; and whoso- ever is deceived thereby is not wise." ^^^^ DATE DUE SLIP CNIVEKSITY OF CALIFORNIA MEDICAL SCHOOL LIBEASV THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW APK : 1936 , m . 1942 ! U'' .9tiL-2i§^ ed /a Hb^d