feel stronger immediately after eating, and before the food is digested, or absorbed into the sanguiferous system. All the muscles of the body sympathize with this membrane.

Fermented liquors raise the strength by impressing the brain in a manner analogous to animal food. For, like animal food, they increase the color of the face, which is an index that they excite and stimulate all the small vessels of the brain. Mr. Strutt, in his View of Manners and Customs (cited by Dr. Beddoes), quotes a play of the time of Henry the Eighth or Elizabeth, in which a citizen declares he has sent his daughter in a morning as far as Pimlico, "to get a draught of ale to put a color into her cheeks." This increase of color passes for a sign of increased health.

But to estimate the effects of these substances, we must look at the whole of their properties. The first and most important of these properties is, that they diminish the appetite and impair the powers of digestion. Water drinkers are well known to have much keener appetites than the drinkers of beer. This is commonly used as a proof of the wholesomeness of water, but it really shows only the noxious power of beer. Low women of unprincipled habits give gin even to their infants, that they may eat less bread. It is clear, from these facts, that fermented liquors sap and undermine the very sources of life. All permanent health and strength must be derived from a sound stomach and perfect digestion of the food.

Fermented liquors have also a strong narcotic power. Though they do not cause sleep (at least with the same power and certainty as opium), they remarkably diminish the sensibility of the nervous system. Hence they destroy and diminish many uneasy feelings. They take off the uneasiness of hunger, the uneasiness of lassitude, and the uneasiness of cold. These are some of the greatest evils that the poor man suffers, and, in consequence, he flies to the use of spirits, heedless or ignorant of the ultimate consequence. To so great a degree is the sensibility of the body impaired by spirits, that a drunkard has been known to cut off his fingers in a fit of intoxication, without apparent suffering, and with no recollection of what had happened when the drunken fit was over.

Besides this great, and, as it were, violent diminution of sensibility, under the immediate impression of fermented liquors, there appears also to be a permanent diminution of sensibility, in persons habitually using them, which extends to all the organs. The spirit undergoes no change in the stomach, but it is absorbed into the circulating mass; it is applied to the whole

body, and is finally eliminated by all the excretory organs. If therefore they are habitually used, the body is constantly under their influence in a greater or less degree. The well-known fact, that persons who abstain from fermented liquors have a much greater delicacy of taste than those of opposite habits, may be cited as a proof that the sensibility of the latter is radically impaired. What is true of the tongue and palate is true, probably, of the whole nervous system.

Observations on savages illustrates this fact more strongly. They have been often observed to have a much greater perfection of the senses, as of the eyesight and hearing, than Europeans usually possess. As the fact is sufficiently well known, it will be enough to cite a single observation in proof of it. A writer, mentioning a native of New Zealand, named Moyhanger, says of him, "It was worthy of remark how much his sight and hearing were superior to other persons on board the ship; the sound of a distant gun was distinctly heard, or a strange sail readily discernible by Moyhanger, when no other man could hear or perceive them.' Now it certainly has never appeared that negroes, or savages of any sort, brought to Europe, and conforming to European manners, enjoy this or any other superiority over other persons. There is every reason to believe that there is no physical difference between the different tribes of mankind, except what is the result of different habits. As the tribe we are now considering used both flesh and fish in as great abundance as Europeans, the great superiority of the senses which the savage tribes enjoy cannot, with any probability, be attributed to any other cause than to their being unacquainted with the use of fermented liquors.

It is hardly necessary to add that as large quantities of fermented liquors are highly deleterious, producing a total loss of muscular power, and an abolition nearly complete of all sensation; as these symptoms are not unfrequently fatal, the suspicion appears very just, that the perpetual ingurgitation of such matters cannot be innocent, however moderate the quantity may be; and that all the pleasure or the comfort which persons derive from such habits are gained at the ultimate expense of their health, and the abbreviation of their lives.

It appears then that the advantages experienced from fermented liquors, and from animal food, are subject to the same limitations, and regulated by the same laws. There are many diseases of debility in which the radical strength of the constitution is unimpaired, and its powers adequate to the restoration of health. In such diseases the stimulus of animal food and of

fermented liquors may have no sensible injury, or even may produce great apparent advantages. But they must aggravate all habitual and constitutional diseases. The relief from pain or uneasiness which they procure is induced only by a species of stupefaction; and the strength that they give is from stimulation merely, and induces premature and permanent weakness. In all diseases tending to death, and in which therefore there must be a radical loss of power, this stimulation must do harm. It excites action, which must further impair the strength and accelerate the fatal issue of the disease.

This is a distinction which ought never for a single moment to be out of view. A want of attention to, or ignorance of the opposite effects of the same treatment in different states of the constitution, is what causes such diversity of opinion and inconsistent practices. A feeble child, with some external scrofulous disorder, for example, is made to use animal food and wine. Its color improves; it grows stronger; and if the disorder is unaffected, the child at least appears in better health. The same practice therefore is transferred to another child, also said to be scrofulous, but with some much more formidable disease—a white swelling we may say, or a psoas abscess. Here it is impossible but this practice must be highly noxious. The inherent powers of the system are weakened; and mere stimulation can never impart radical strength. On the contrary, it abbreviates life; and the mischief done must in such cases be very great and very sensible.

The habitual use of fermented liquors is a cause of destruction sufficient of itself to counteract all the good effects of diet by no means insalubrious, and of situation which is more than commonly healthful. In the Pays de Vaud, in Switzerland, half who are born live to forty-one. Very nearly a fourth part live to three years of age, the great mortality being in the first year. But notwithstanding these strong indications of general salubrity, after forty the probabilities of living in this country decrease very fast; and after sixty-five they appear to be rather lower than is common. 'Mr. Muret," Dr. Price observes, "has taken notice of this fact, and ascribes it to the particular prevalence of drunkenness in his country. He had," he says, once the curiosity to examine the register of deaths in one town, and to mark those whose deaths might be imputed to drunkenness, and he found the number so great as to incline him to believe that hard drinking kills more of mankind than pleurisies and fevers, and all the most malignant distempers."

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The species of torpor or impaired sensibility, which I have attributed to the use of fermented liquors, is not a consequence of this practice only. Animal food produces it likewise, as is obvious from the improvement of the senses consequent upon relinquishing it, and using vegetable food only. As the putrescent matter or Septic Poison of water is powerful enough to induce palsy (as I shall show hereafter), this substance, it is evident, must have an analogous effect. We may extend this remark to the digesting powers. The disuse of fermented liquors, the relinquishment of animal food, and the use of purified water, all increase the appetite and appear to strengthen the digestion. We may conclude then, that fermented liquors, animal food, and impure water injure the digesting powers. The same observation may be applied to the secreting powers, and the derangement of the other functions of the body.

It must follow from these facts that these effects of diminishing the sensibility of the nervous system, impairing the digestion, and deranging the other functions of the body are not to be deemed specific effects of these peculiar matters. They are rather to be deemed common effects and common signs of an injured vitality; and it seems probable that any applications or agents whatever, which diminish the powers of life and tend ultimately to destroy them, would have similar intermediate. effects.

This leads me to remark that the specific effects of fermented liquors upon the body have not been hitherto precisely determined. At least the diseases which are ascribed, and with great justice, to spirituous potations, often occurring where this evil custom cannot be traced, it is obvious to suspect that the liquors are not the sole agents, but are to be esteemed only as an accelerating and concurring cause in the production of these diseases.

Physicians assert that the use of fermented liquors occasions dropsy, epilepsy, palsy, insanity, and other the greatest calamities incident to human nature. A multitude of observations which are constantly occurring to any man who looks round him, give great probability to these opinions. For example, I was well acquainted with a gentleman who had been afflicted for eight years or more with the most acute and agonizing pains of the stomach attended with sickness and vomiting, and recurring at intervals. These pains finally ceased from no other cause, as far as it could be ascertained, than his becoming much more temperate, and wholly relinquishing the use of spirits and water. Another person whom I well knew, a large,

full man, advanced in years, was subject to attacks very nearly approaching to apoplexy. He lived in Herefordshire, and drank much cider. One year the crop of apples totally failed; and the man being in reduced circumstances, his supply of cider failed likewise. The consequence was that during this time he escaped his customary attacks.

Still, however, as these great diseases cannot be warded off by the strictest temperance, they cannot be deemed the specific effect of the poison of alcohol, but rather must be regarded as the ultimate effect of various and concurring morbific powers, acting on different persons according to the susceptibility and predisposition of each individual. It can hardly be doubted that every agent has a distinct and peculiar effect as well as a general effect. It is highly desirable that these should be duly defined. But I do not feel competent to this task, nor to elucidate the peculiar agency of each matter, further than by a relation of the facts, which I propose to form the sequel of this work.

That fermented liquors should be deleterious, induce disease, and shorten life, is so far from affording a reasonable ground of complaint against the order of nature, that it is a proof of the wisdom and beneficence of the over-ruling Power. Were it otherwise, the rich would be enabled absolutely to starve the poor, by their wasteful consumption of the articles of first necessity. To make a pint of wine, I suppose at least three or four pounds of grapes are used, enough amply to support a man for a day. The man, therefore, who drinks only his pint of wine daily, uses his own proper quantity of food, and destroys at the same time what might have been the food of another man. As the power of swallowing down wine is almost unlimited, to what an extent would this mischief spread, if it did not find its natural boundary in the destruction of life which such habits occasion? All but the proprietors of the soil, and those living by their sufferance, would be swept from the surface of the earth. Property under such circumstances would be an evil wholly insufferable.

The distilleries are reckoned servicable as being a resource against famine in unfavorable seasons. But are not the evils which they induce much greater than those which they are thought to counteract? Do they not keep up a perpetual famine among the wives and families of thousands of mechanics, by the dissolute habits of the fathers which they engender, the loss of health, and early deaths? To convert the bread of the poor into poison, of all the abuses of the bounties of Providence, is the most flagrant and abominable.