and the gastric juice diminished in quantity, and of an unnatural viscidity, and yet he described himself as perfectly well, and complained of nothing. Two days subsequent to this, the inner membrane of the stomach was unusually morbid, the inflammatory appearance more extensive, the spots more livid than usual; from the surface of some of them exuded small drops of grumcus blood; the ulcerous patches were larger and more numerous; the mucous covering thicker than usual, and the gastric secretions much more vitiated. The gastric fluids extracted were mixed with a large proportion of thick ropy mucous, and a considerable muco-purulent discharge, slightly tinged with blood, resembling discharges from the bowels in some cases of dysentery. Notwithstanding this diseased appearance of the stomach, no very essential aberration of its functions was manifested. St. Martin complained of no symptoms indicating any general derangement of the system, except an uneasy sensation and tenderness at the pit of the stomach, and some vertigo with dimness and yellowness of vision on stooping down and rising up again." Dr. Beaumont further observed, that "The free use of ardent spirits, wine, beer, or any other intoxicating liquor, when continued for some days, has invariably produced these changes." functions better when it is "inflamed and ulcerated" than when it is sound and healthy? Were we to apply to our hands and feet and tongues a poison which would blister and ulcerate them, should we be able to work better, talk better, or move about with more pleasure? What madness, then, to subject so delicate an organ as the stomach to these inconveniences! But it must not be forgotten that it is in the stomach, and by the help of the gastric juice that the food undergoes that vital change which fits it for nutrition. If what we eat is not digested, it cannot nourish us. Now, Dr. Beaumont found that you could not mix the gastric juice even with distilled water, which is allowed to be one of the purest diluents in nature, without injuring its properties, and staying digestion. He put a piece of meat into a phial of pure gastric juice, and another piece into some that was diluted; both were subjected to the same heat, but the meat in the phial that contained the undiluted juice was digested best and soonest. And if it could not be improved by so simple a substance as distilled water, much less could it be improved by mixture with such a poison as alcohol, which both ulcerates the stomach, and hardens the food which is taken. Alcohol is an antiseptic; we put bodies into it to preserve them from decay. Can anything, then, be more absurd than to saturate our food with an antiseptic that it may dissolve the better? Should we commend the wisdom of the potter who should first harden the clay that he might render it more plastic? And yet we are guilty of greater folly in swallowing a drink which renders the food harder, and more difficult of digestion, and boast of doing so for the purpose of increasing its digestibleness! Fermented liquor, instead of improving the I have introduced these experiments and observations of the effects of fermented liquors upon the stomach, for the purpose of shewing that this insidious poison commences its work of destruction as soon as it comes in contact with the digestive organs. It does not wait until it has spread through the frame, but it actually attacks the very first member it touches. The mouth and palate dismiss it immediately. It would probably cure the worst of sots of his pro-gastric juice, ulcerates the stomach, and evenpensity, if you could fix a plug in his throat, and doom him to keep his mouth full of gin and water or strong beer for a whole day. It is a query whether his tongue, subjected to twelve hours' action of alcohol upon its surface, would have any skin on it at night. But the tongue is far less liable to hurt from such a source than the inner coats of the stomach, and the blood-vessels. These delicate organs are, therefore, peculiarly susceptible of injury from this "acrid poison." The stomach, which is one of the most important laboratories of our frame, is injured as soon as this vile spirit enters it. It becomes, as actual observation has now demonstrated, "inflamed and ulcerated." The gastric juice is greatly lessened and vitiated, and in a short time mixed with a large proportion of thick, ropy mucous, and a considerable mucopurulent discharge, slightly tinged with blood, resembling the discharge from the bowels in some cases of dysentery." And will any one say that the gastric juice is bettered by being thus mixed with the corrupt discharge of ulcers? or that the stomach can perform its 3. The tually corrupts this marvellous solvent with that the stream might be sweet, nor would a chemist render his retorts and jars fusible or corrosive that his gases might be the purer; yet this is what we do in drinking alcoholic drinks. We pour a poison into the blood which corrupts and inflames it, and we do so to make it pure! We ulcerate the stomach to render it more capable of its functions! And what is the result of all this? Why that indigestion is become a national disease. The athletic husbandman, whose frame, in former years, was braced with nerves of iron, and who laughed at the weakling who talked of being nervous, now, from drinking ale and cider, trembles like an aspen leaf; and this sturdy rustic who, in the days of our fathers, never felt that he had a stomach, now goes to the druggist for carbonate of soda, or keeps in his bed-room a box of antibilious pills! The medical witnesses before the House of Commons, agreed in stating that indigestion among the labouring classes is altogether a new disease, and all equally agreed in attributing it to strong drinks. On hearing a youth complaining of being nervous, an old woman, the other day, exclaimed, "Nervous! nervous! People had no nerves when I was young!" They had what was better. They had nerves in a healthy state, and therefore they were never reminded, by diseased tremours, that they had any nerves at all. Savages, that have none of our stimulants, have scarcely more than one disease among them, and that disease is death-not sudden, or from apoplexy-but from the shaft of the warrior, or the gradual decay of nature, unless famine may have intervened. Our strong and wholesome ales and ciders, as they are called, our potent wines and cordials, as they are puffed, instead of bracing, have shaken, the nerves of the nation, and made us tremble at a shadow. Some, perhaps, have it in their power to gratify a vitiated taste more than others, and by stimulating their frames till, to use the strong language of Dr. Farre, their "brains rend," may feel little of nervousness, and consequently have a short life and a merry one, and rush into eternity uncalled for, and before they have "accomplished as an hireling their day." Some may have a particularly robust frame, so that it may have taken them sixty or seventy years to break up their constitutions; but these are exceptions, and their number is gradually decreasing, and we are getting weaker and weaker as a people. Indigestion is born with us, and the infant that hangs at his mother's breast pines day and night under the pangs of dyspepsia, while the nutritious stream, that nature has provided for his sustenance, poisoned with the alcohol that his mother drinks, feeds the disease, and condemns him to a life of suffering. The ploughman, who breathes the purest air of heaven, and the delicate lady, who cannot inhale a volume of the wholesome atmosphere without a cold, heave sigh for sigh over their shattered nerves and disordered digestive organs. Warriors and lawyers, parsons, senators, and huntsmen, all suffer from bile, indigestion, and a swimming in the head. The lords and the ladies of creation have changed the lovely rouge of nature for the sallow tinges of jaundice, bile, or disorganized liver. Every newspaper has its long advertisements of antibilious quackery, and the pillbox is become an essential part of the furniture of the toilet and dressing-case. Morison, and a thousand other quacks, have reaped princely fortunes in catering for stomachs and nerves which alcoholic drinks have ulcerated or shattered. "Doctors," as Abernethy said, "have multiplied beyond all precedent, and diseases have kept pace with them." Never were there such host of physicians, nor of maladies which they feel incompetent to cure. These diseases are not in the pure atmosphere of heaven, are not in the wholesome farina of wheat, the starch of potatoes, or the fibre and gelatine of animal food. These painful affections belong not essentially to the frame which God has given us. They are not natural, but acquired, and acquired from the use of alcohol more than from any other source. We drink a poison, innoculate ourselves with disease, and then impiously exclaim, "That it has pleased God to give us a diseased constitution!" That it has pleased him to associate poison and pain together is a wise provision, to deter us from infecting our bodies and shortening our lives; but that it has pleased him arbitrarily, and without any fault of ours, to scourge us with indigestion, nervousness, apoplexy, and aneurism, is a reflection on his Goodness that falls little short of blasphemy. "He doth not willingly afflict nor grieve the children of men." What can be more impious than to manufacture a deleterious spirit; to destroy millions' worth of nutritious food; to drink a pestiferous bowl and send the poison through our veins; and then charge a God of love with arbitrarily dooming us to disease and a premature tomb! Dr. Dods tells us, in the passage already quoted, that "alcohol coagulates the albuminous and gelatinous parts of our structure, and corrugates the solid parts as the muscles, &c.” Surely nature never intended that we should thus curd the juices of our frame, or contract and wrinkle the muscles which God intended for the vigorous and pleasurable movements of our bodies! Under the increased excitement of alcohol, the same physiologist informs us that "the circulation is quickened," and the "diameter of the vessels, through which the blood has to flow, is diminished." More work is demanded at the very time that the capacity of these wonderful tubes for their labour is decreased. In the wise economy of nature, "a given amount of blood, with a given men of athletic form and bulk superannuated before they are fifty; unable to read, write, or cast accounts, because of a dizziness in the head; unable to think, speak, or act, because of their nervous affections? These gentlemen, though six feet high, like sentimental girls, have a supposed hysterical ball in the throat, and must have a smellingfrom fainting; must wash in eau-de-cologne to keep up their spirits, or must carry camphorated or other lozenges in their pockets to prevent their swooning in company. These all know that the bottle would be an instantaneous reviver; but then they have learnt by experience that excitement from such a source would only, after the fumes of the spirit had evaporated, or rather, perhaps, intoxicated every nerve, muscle, and blood-vessel of their body, render them more dyspeptic, bilious, and tottering. What a wonder that they do not allow Nature to finish their education in dietetics She has taught them that partial abstinence from these drinks is good, and if they would but listen to her suggestions, she would show them that total abstinence would be force, in a given time," and through pipes of a given and proper "diameter" is to be circulated; by drinking intoxicating drinks, we increase the quantity of fluid which we have changed into fiery contaminated blood, we increase the force that propels it, we shorten the time in which it is to be done,-and at the same moment, decrease the diameter of the tubes through which it is to pass-bottle, or a perfumed snuff-box, to keep them and is it any wonder that blood vessels burst, sometimes on the brain and cause instant death; sometimes in the lungs, and afflict for life that mysterious purifier of the blood? Is it wonderful that by the bursting of over-worked, over-heated, and poisoned vessels, "diseased deposits" should be formed which may ulcerate the lungs, ossify the heart, produce cancers and calculi of various descriptions and kinds? Bleeding at the nose, hæmorrhoidal and other diseased fluxes and swellings occur from the same cause. As alcohol, especially seeks the heart, the seat of life, and propels it with a deadly velocity, and seeks the brain, the seat of thought, intelligence, and moral judgment, and, by loading the blood vessels of that delicate organ, encumbers the head, is it to be wondered at that palpitation of the heart ensues, or that the mind is too confused to think, or that the eye becomes dim, the ears deaf, and the tongue clammy? Persons that drink stimulating liquors have a swimming in their heads, a dimness before their vision, a ringing in their ears, a nervous sense of obstruction in the organs of speech, a supposed ball rising up in their throats, and a palsied shake of the hand, and tottering of the limbs. And nothing could be more natural than that it should be so. The brain, whence all the nerves of the frame beautifully and delicately ramify in ten thousand different directions, is put under a confused and unhealthy excitement, and therefore all the messengers which it sends forth, to accomplish volition, to collect information, or bring home intelligence, are injured, weakened, and doomed to be partakers of the confusion of the head. Hence, vision is misty from the intoxication of the nerve of the eye,- the hearing is diseased from the unnatural action of the nerves of the ear, and the tongue, the throat, the hands, the feet, are all equally disturbed in the performance of their duty. Unnatural sounds are heard, unnatural sights are seen, unearthly voices are uttered, and the whole man is more like a puppet danced by wires than a being who has nerves, brain, and a human soul associated with these, to regulate his movements, and guide him in the interpretation of his sensations. It must not be supposed that what has just been described are the feelings of the intemperate alone; they are the associates of moderate drinking in ten thousand instances. What is more common than to meet with their effectual cure. It will soon be seen that what are laughed at as the vagaries of tea-totallers, are, after all, the benevolent dictates of our constitution, and that Nature has preached total abstinence from the days of Adam. By headaches, by indigestion, by trembling nerves, palpitating hearts, erysipelatous and dropsical limbs; by bile, hæmorrhage, consumption, asthma, and hepatic affections, she has long been calling upon men to abstain from these poisonous potations. The writer of this essay always in using these drinks, observed the rules of moderation, but nevertheless was doomed for years to a miserable existence from this cause alone. My nervous feelings were such that I have often risen up to walk to see if my limbs would move, and repeatedly have spoken aloud to ascertain if my speech was not altogether gone. A constant mist floated before my eyes, sounds rung in my ears; an unnatural weight, or sensation of weight, oppressed my head, and made it painful to stoop; a knock at the door shook my whole frame, and family prayer was repeatedly postponed from inability and want of voice to pass through the duty. Flatulency to a degree that seemed to threaten all the functions of life was my daily companion, and has often compelled me to rise up by night and exert myself most vigorously to remove the indesirable tightness across the chest which it occasioned Biliousness rendered almost every kind of food nauseating. The greater part of the wholesome and nutritious "good creatures of God" were placed under the ban of my diseased stomach. whose healthy powers In were destroyed by this accursed creature of man. My heart used to beat so loud after retiring to bed, that for some time, I could get no sleep. My rest was never refreshing, because a diseased stomach and stimulated brain and nerves tortured me with dreams, sometimes the most horrific that can be imagined; besides what is vulgarly termed the cramp and nightmare, which arose from the action of alcohol on my nerves and muscles, used frequently to disturb my rest. Constipation, which sometimes seemed to bid defiance to the strongest medicine, made me wretched from day to day. Frequently have I expected every minute to faint, especially when in company. The feeling that I should instantly fall down dead haunted we every where. I used, when from home, always to take a card in my pocket lest I should drop dead in the street, and my friends might not hear of me. reading the word of God, or the Church service, I was compelled to select short chapters, and the length of the thanksgiving used to shake my whole frame. Such are a few of the evils I endured. Physicians told me my disease was clerical, and I must give up study, drink weak brandy-and-water, or a glass of wine per day. Having drunk more wine and brandy than usual during the cholera, I providentially discovered that spirits disagreed with me, and gave them up entirely. My nerves got better, and my health altogether improved. Still I took a little homebrewed beer daily, and occasionally a little wine, and dear enough had I to pay for the indulgence. The arguments of James Teare, four years ago, induced me to try "total abstinence," and all my complaints almost instantly fled. I am never troubled with bile; I never need medicine. I hardly know that I have either a head, stomach or nerves, because they never pain me. eat whatever comes to hand without fear of bile or indigestion. I can sleep soundly, and am rarely troubled with dreams. can read and study for days together without pain or injury. Indeed mental exercise seems to be advantageous. I can preach four times on the Sabbath, and often without the least fatigue. But, for total abstinence, I am sure that I must now have been on the superanuated list of ministers; while, from adopting that principle, my life is pleasurable and my labours refreshing. I used to feel such fatigue on a Monday as to be unfit for anything; but now I can rise at four or five o'clock on a Monday morning, and commence the closest study without the least inconvenience. I have mentioned my own case, because I have reason to believe that in my former feelings I had a thousand brother dyspeptics among studious and professional men, who could enter into all the feelings that I have described, and who might obtain a cure by following the prin I can I 8. ciple I have adopted. Nothing can be more absurd than for a man whose employment or profession calls for mental exercise and excitement, to drink intoxicating or any stimulating drinks. Surely commercial calculations and enterprizes, preparing for the bar, the pulpit, or the senate, are excitements enough, without stimulating the head with a material spirit. I know, from a good many experiments, that a glass of wine, in the fatigue it produces, is quite equal to an extra sermon. The old mode of passing the Sunday was enough to shatter a brain and nerves of iron. 1. The excitement and mental activity in preparing for the pulpit which greatly exercised the brain. 2. The labour of going through the service, which, whether pleasant or painful, still agitated the brain. 3. When service was over a glass of wine, which immediately went to the head. 4. Dinner and another glass of beer or wine. still going to the brain and nerves. 5. Afternoon service, all mental and exciting to the brain. 6. Tea or coffee, all highly stimulating, and operating immediately upon the nerves and brain. 7. Preparations for evening service still agitating the head. Reading, prayer, and sermon, each a mental effort, and keeping the head excited. 9. After service a glass of wine, which inflamed the already jaded-headed. 10. Supper, attended with some alcoholic drink to digest the whole and give sleep! And to all this may be added a stomach, rendered by these intoxicating potations, unfit for the work of digestion, and while the brain and nerves were suffering from exhaustion, dyspepsy prevented the food from being changed into the nutritious aliment that nature demanded. Thus the body was doomed to extraordinary labour and exhaustion, and was at the same time robbed of the support which welldigested food would have furnished. Could anything be more absurd than such a mode of proceeding? Rest and wholesome diet are the two resources of our frame when worn out by labour; but in this case both were denied. The brain, by study, preaching, praying and alcohol, was not allowed a minute's rest. And as digestion was impaired, the waste of the body was not supplied by nutrition, and instead thereof was inflamed with a poison. Is it any wonder that ministers, commercial men, senators and others, often become paralytic, or are disabled by dyspeptic and nervous affections? I will leave others to judge whether my present mode of life is or is not most likely to conduce to health. Let us take the Sabbath. 1. Rise at half-past five, and, before leaving home, take a small portion of food, and then a gentle walk into the country. 2. Short service, prayer meeting, or preaching for about an hour. 3. Gentle walk home, by which the blood is drawn from the head to the feet, and the brain is rested and fitted for the next service. Breakfast, if necessary, is also now finished, which, by causing a tendency of the blood to the stomach, equally rests the brain, and keeps up a healthful circulation. 4. The ten o'clock service, easy to the head and nerves, because each have been enjoying repose. 5. After service, the brain, instead of being excited by alcohol, allowed to rest. 6. Dinner of nutritious food, but nothing alcoholic taken, either to render the food indigestible, ulcerate the stomach, or agitate the head. 7. Afternoon or evening service, for which the body, re-invigorated with food, and the brain with rest, are amply prepared, and the labour itself becomes rather refreshing and bracing than otherwise. Lastly, The services ended, a light supper, if any, nothing stimulating, or intoxicating drunk, the brain and nerves are allowed to rest or simply cheered by conver sation, until balmy sleep grants her refreshing hours of repose. We have merely placed these two modes of living in juxtaposition, that the reader, whether a physiologist or not, may judge which of the two he deems most conducive to health and bodily comfort. Surely, it hardly needs the consideration of a child to perceive that great corporeal or mental exercise cannot require the addition of a poisonous stimulant to add to the fatigue of the frame. Bodily exercise, whether with the hands or feet, is excitement; mental exercise, whether in the college, the senatehouse, the laboratory, the study, or counting-house, is excitement, and makes a great demand upon the nerves and the brain. What need, then, in either of these cases, to add the debilitating impulses of strong drinks? Let the digestive organs be kept healthy, and, in most instances, they will be, if this poison is kept out of the stomach; let nutritious food be taken, and then the gastric juice and the other fluids employed in preparing the food for its office as an aliment, will send through the whole frame a fluid which will gently excite without exhaustion, and will supply the constant waste of the system. But alcoholic drinks, as Dr. Mussey has remarked, "cannot be digested." The stomach, as Dr. Beaumont observed in the case of St. Martin, does not digest water, much less can it digest alcohol, which is lighter and less substantial than water. It seems that whatever liquid enters the stomach, is strained or filtered through the venous capillaries; the solid parts are left behind for digestion, and the liquid is sent through the body; alcohol therefore cannot be nutritious because it cannot be digested. In its native character, as a diffusive poison, it visits every organ of our frame, and carries its heat and excitement to the most extreme parts of the system, and injures and deIt calls on every power ranges the whole. of the body to perform extra labour, and, at the same time, robs them of the nutriment which all need to enable them to perform their extra task. Were a farmer or a manufacturer to rob his labourers of a considerable portion of their daily bread, and then to apply to them all a whip and compel them to do double work, he would only treat his men as the drinker of alcoholic poison treats his own body. By injuring the digestive organs the system is deprived of a portion of the wholesome aliment which it demands, and by stimulating the frame, every organ is flogged on to an unnatural degree of labour and waste; great exhaustion and fatigue must therefore be the result. The writer can speak experimentally. When he drank these stimulants, bodily or mental exertion was always followed with extreme fatigue; but now he can pursue either, to a much greater degree, with scarcely any sense of weariness, and, what is more remarkable, with a less quantity of nutritions food. There is reason to believe that what was formerly eaten was never properly digested or assimilated, while, from this circumstance, and from the excitement of these liquors, an unnatural appetite was created; but now a less amount of food is taken, nothing stimulant is drank, and more bodily strength is felt and consequently less fatigue from even a far greater degree of labour. It is remarkable that all who have given total abstinence a fair trial have felt the same. have under my eye, masons, plasterers, reapers and harvest-men, sawyers, carpenters, blacksmiths, hawkers that travel miles every day with a pack at their back, men that work in factories for twelve hours a day, shopkeepers, medical men, ministers, students, delicate females, mothers nursing their children, men working in sugar-houses for twelve or sixteen hours in the day exposed to a high temperature of heat, men working in a brick-yard exposed to damps and cold, persons who have drunk to excess, and those who never drunk more than moderately,—and yet all of these without a single exception have adopted "total abstinence," not only without any inconvenience, but with much actual advantage. There is one testimony which all give, which is "That they can perform their labour with a less degree of fatigue." And all this, as every physiologist must admit, is perfectly natural. As we have said before, Labour is excitement, study is excitement. Many a mechanic has to use his head and his hands at the same time, and therefore is hourly under the impulses of a double excitement; and will any medical man, who knows his business, say that a third excitement is needed to prevent fatigue? The man that would say so has yet to study the physiology, ay, and pathology, of his profession, and is a mere certificated quack, in whose hands I |