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 condition; and, accordingly, a small dose of tartar emetic was taken, a short time before every meal. This succeeded 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!

The most perfect health and strength depend, it would seem, on frequent and complete disintegration of tissue, with a corresponding, constant, and complete replacement of the effete parts by the formation of new material; and this salutary combination is best secured by abundant exercise, plentiful supply of nutritious food, good digestion, and copious drinking of water. The training of prize-fighters, and other athletes, illustrates this: their "condition" being the

"Respiratory Materials."

81

result of much strong exercise in the open air, free use of animal food, and the eschewing of all strong drinks in favour of the pure element.

That plea of our opponents 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 obviously fallacious. It is true that you or I-as healthy men-could not live as we ought on such a small allowance 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 combustion are really food," say they, "and should be considered as such: and alcohol, all must admit, has peculiar claims in that way, therefore it is food." To that we answer-first: Liebig's theory is contradicted by recent observers: second-granting it to be true, for your sake, permit us a simple experiment, in return for your courteous invitation to make trial on

66

Therapeutic, not Hygienic.

of health may be but a "seeming." May not the unnecessary use of the alcoholics have engendered a diseased state of the system, which requires a continuance 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 in a morbid or unnatural state—in consequence of the drug's previous 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 must have his alcoholics again to raise his nervous system out of such depression-temporary and deceitful though such raising be. The difference 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

"Fermented and distilled liquors," says Royer-Collard, "are never necessary for any purpose, except in certain persons, in whom habit has created a need of them truly morbid; and then these drinks are to be regarded rather in connection with the cure of disease, than with the maintenance of health."

1

A time to Stop the Drug.

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is one and the same.-3. Remember in suitable 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 regulated 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 at the proper time. Perhaps the first intimation of his error would be the discovery of intense salivation, with loose teeth, swollen gums, and ulcerated tongue, in his unfortunate patient -the constitution mayhap hurt irretrievably. Or he orders lead, and 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 precisely 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 increase the dose to attain the ordinary effect; and, secondly, 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 extreme moral danger of intemperance.

ALCOHOL AS FOOD.

Here is the fundamental and fatal error: men esteeming 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 cir