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 conversation, until balmy sleep grants her refreshing hours of repose

We have merely placed these two modes of living in juxta position, 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 senate-house, 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 deranges the whole. It calls on every power of the body to perform extra labor, 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 laborers of a considerable portion of their daily bread, and then to apply to them all a whip and com

pel 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 labor 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 nutritious 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 labor. It is remarkable that all who have given total abstinence a fair trial have felt the same.

I have under my eye, masons, plasterers, reapers and harvestmen, 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 brickyard 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 labor with a less degree of fatigue." And all this, as every physiologist must admit, is perfectly natural. As we have said before, labor 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 no one ought to trust his life or his health. He who has much labor and much excitement wants nutrition, not stimulus. But alcoholic drinks are stimulating poisons which cannot nourish, but rather add to the fatigue of the body by the very momentary impulse they seem to give, and poison it at the same time.

I have been particularly interested in perceiving the good effects of "total abstinence" on females of delicate health. I know one case of a lady of a very weak constitution, who always was attended by a doctor, but who, on totally abstaining from all intoxicating drinks, became healthy and strong, immediately dismissed her medical attendant and threw away her physic. Another for six years, had been the subject of the most distressing pains of the stomach, back, spine, head and limbs. Nursing her children was attended with the most painful sensations and weariness. She adopted total abstinence, lost her ailments, and since has nursed two children without once complaining of exhaustion. What is worthy of remark, the children are much stronger than either of the others were at the same age and enjoy uninterrupted health. This is all perfectly natural. No alcohol has been taken by the mother, and she has not suffered from the. exciting fatigue of that stimulus. The nutritious food with which nature has supplied her for her infants has not been poisoned with alcohol, and the children have suffered nothing from flatulency or other complaints that torture infancy. Their digestion has not been injured, or their tender nerves and brain excited by spirits in any form, and therefore are healthy and strong. The command given to Samson's mother was not arbitrary, but physiological. Had his mother drunk either wine or strong drink, it would have required a constant miracle from God to extract the poisonous stimulant from his frame, and to heal the hourly injuries that it would have inflicted on his stomach, brain, nerves and muscles. Alcohol might have made a weakling and a pigmy of Samson, and therefore God enjoined total abstinence" both on him and his mother.

Can anything, too, be more absurd, than that the delicate frame of woman should be excited and poisoned by this stimulant? The tissues of her system are peculiarly fine and tender, her mind is particularly sensitive; the brain and nerve of her frame are much more liable to excitement than those of the other sex. She is "the weaker vessel," and to this circumstance owes that softness, sympathy and refinement of feeling which constitute the glory of her being, and make her a "help meet" for man. To all the thousand injuries that intoxicating stimuli can inflict, her constitution is peculiarly exposed, and never has any poor being suffered more deeply from its scourge. Under its influence she has been robbed of all the softness, delicacy, and modesty of her nature. By it she has been changed into a virago, scold, tyrant, and impassioned demon. In many instances it has made her affectedly sentimental, or worse than brutally hard-hearted, or a capricious, dissatisfied despot, whom no one could please. Her brain and nerves, and consequently her intellectual and bodily energies have been impaired and ruined by it. It has introduced to her frame every description of disease, and contaminated her mind with every vice. Such have been its effects in ten thousand cases on the fairest part of creation.

We could scarcely pardon the miscreant who would wantonly pour upon the "rose of Sharon" or "the lily of the valley" a liquid that would wither its beauties and destroy its sweetness. Yet woman, the loveliest and fairest flower upon earth, is daily being blanched, contaminated, or destroyed, by this deleterious liquor. If we blush not at the thought that strong athletic men should be changed by alcohol into trembling effeminate women, yet let us not push the bowl further round and change woman into a vixen, a weeping sentimentalist, an impassioned fury, or a torpid and insipid dyspeptic. No one can rationally and seriously contemplate the effects of even moderate drinking upon female health and character, without feeling the most imperative motive to abstain. By the ancient Roman laws it was death for a woman to drink wine. Both Pliny and Polybius attest this fact. The punishment may have been severe, but the prohibition was natural. God never intended her delicate

system to be inspirited by alcohol. And the rude Roman knew that if she drunk these poisons, she would become "dead while she lived," and therefore, by execution, he doomed her at once to the grave, lest her morals, contaminated with wine, should render her manners more pestiferous to society than the most pestilent putrescent carcase.

We have dwelt thus largely on the effects of alcoholic drinks on the nerves, brain, and whole constitution of moderate drinkers, because, as all drinkers were first moderate, and as all diseases must have been incipient, we believe it will be admitted by all who have examined the subject, that "the temperance and moderation" of which many boast so loudly, are the cause of a very great proportion of the diseases that now prey upon the people. We are not about to deny that there are other causes of disease. Want of cleanliness, want of exercise, of proper clothing, of wholesome air, of a nutritious variety of food, all tend to disease. Over-exertion by undue labor of body or mind, improper exposure to sudden changes of temperature, and epicurean and sensual indulgences, all have their appropriated and associated maladies and scourges. But still among all these sources of disease, alcohol stands preeminent as a destroyer. Few men would have argued that because there were other causes of death and disease, therefore Jenner ought to have left the small-pox to sweep away its millions annually.

After we have done our utmost for human health and longevity, still there will remain ample materials for pain and mortality. Even the misanthrope need not fear that if alcoholic drinks are abandoned, there will be but little suffering left for his malignity to carouse upon. And he whose morbid charity leads him to dread lest the curse which God has pronounced should be frustrated, may dry up his tears, because it is not our intention to interfere with any divine arrangement. To the sentence, "dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return," we bow with submission; but we cannot admit that because God has doomed us to die, therefore man has a right to invent a poisonous drink which shall shorten and embitter the period of our reprieve.