of Nature in providing for us a beverage which has nothing to tempt us to drink, except when we are really thirsty. At all other times, water is either perfectly indifferent, or it is disagreeable to us; but when we labor under thirst, i. e. when nature requires drink, nothing is so delicious. to a pure, unadulterated taste. While we adhere to this simple beverage we shall be sure to have an unerring prompter to remind us when we really require drink; and we shall be in no danger of being tempted to drink when nature requires it not. But the moment we depart from pure water, we lose this inestimable guide, and are left, not to the real instincts of nature, but to an artificial taste, in deciding on actions intimately connected with health and long life. What is more common than for a man to take a glass of beer, or cider, or wine, or rum-and-water, not because he is thirsty, and really needs drink, but because opportunity makes it convenient, and he thinks it will taste well. And this is true not only of fermented or distilled liquors, which are directly injurious in other modes, but, in a less degree, of any addition made to pure water to render it more palatable. Let me not be misunderstood. I am far from insinuating that lemonade, soda-water, and milk-and-water, are hurtful drinks. Far from it. But I say, that in using even these mild and healthful beverages we lose one important advantage we should derive from the use of pure water alone. If they are more palatable to us than water (and otherwise we should have no motive to use them) we shall be tempted to use them oftener, and in greater quantities, than is required by nature, and may thus unconsciously do ourselves an injury. It is rare for a person to drink a glass of water when he is not thirsty, merely for the pleasure of drinking; and as thirst is the natural guide, if he drinks when

not thirsty, he takes more fluid than nature points out as proper, and so far violates one of her obvious laws."

What class of men is so well acquainted, both by scientific research and by observation, with the mischievous influence of alcohol as the members of the medical profession? Do not we, who claim to be a band of philanthropists, owe a high duty to our race in regard to this thing; and has not the sober and virtuous part of the community a right to look to us for united and untiring. exertion in every way toward confining this poison, along with its congeners, arsenic, strychnia, morphia, and prussic acid, to the shelves of the apothecary?

There is but one remedy for intemperance, namely, total abstinence from all that can intoxicate. This is simple, safe, and certain. How remarkable, that under all the light coming from observation, from science, and the faithful chronicles of human history, the culture of the grape, and its manufacture into alcoholic wine, — a liquor which kept the world drunk for centuries upon centuries before distillation was known-which cast down thrones and dominions, patriarchs and priests, philosophers and prophets, should be seriously recommended. as a cure for the world's intemperance!

When alcoholic drinks are employed in cases of prostration or disease, let them be taken under the direction of an intelligent and conscientious physician, who will watch their effects as he would watch those of arsenic or strychnia.

The physician who prescribes alcoholic drink for a dyspeptic, to be taken daily for weeks or months, knowing as he does its tendency to generate an uncontrollable appetite for it, takes upon himself a deep responsibility; and if, thereby, his patient becomes a confirmed inebriate, he

incurs the reflection that he has caused an evil, the amount of which cannot be estimated by any known method of numerical computation.

If there be a single professed lover of the human family, who can take intoxicating drink without fear of injury, or of kindling in himself an appetite which may result in intemperance, let him consider well whether an apostle fixed the standard of Christian duty too high, or overestimated the power of example in emboldening the weak and wavering to violate conscience, when he declared, "It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby my brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak."

If I take wine occasionally, as a beverage, and thereby a single individual is influenced to lay aside his scruples, till he is in the habit of daily intemperate drinking, I am holden in the guilt of having made a drunkard. "Wherefore, if wine make my brother to offend, I will drink no more wine while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend."

The foregoing has reference to fermented or alcoholic or drugged wine. A method of preventing fermentation in grape-juice has been tried with perfect success by James Reynolds, Esq., of Ripley, Brown Co., Ohio. From the last two vintages, viz. 1860 and 1861, he has made about fourteen hundred gallons of a rich and delicious liquor, retaining the natural fragrance of the Catawba grape, which yields not a trace of alcohol on a rigid analysis, and which can be kept unchanged for a long time, probably for years. Will not this figure in the world's history a hundred years hence?

TOBACCO

CHAPTER IV.

-INFLUENCE UPON LIFE AND HEALTH.

§ I. USE OF TOBACCO UNNATURAL.

IN the great kingdom of living nature man is the only animal that seeks to poison or destroy his own instincts, to turn topsy-turvy the laws of his being, and to make himself as unlike as possible that which he was obviously designed to be.

No satisfactory solution of this extraordinary propensity has been given, short of a reference to that

"First disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world and all our woe,
With loss of Eden."

While the myriads of sentient beings spread over the earth adhere with unyielding fidelity to the laws of their several existences, man exerts his superior intellect in Not satisfied attempting to outwit Nature, and to show that she has made an important mistake in his own case. with the symmetry and elegance of form given him by his Creator, he transforms himself into a hideous monster, or copies upon his own person the proportions of some disgusting creature far down in the scale of animal being. Not content with loving one thing and loathing another, he perseveres in his attempts to make bitter sweet and

sweet bitter, till nothing but the shadow is left of his primitive relishes and aversions. This is strikingly exemplified in the habitual use of the narcotic or poisonous vegetables.

§ II. EFFECTS OF TOBACCO ON ANIMAL LIFE.

Dr. Franklin ascertained that the oily material which floats upon the surface of water, upon a stream of tobaccosmoke being passed into it, is capable, when applied to the tongue of a cat, of destroying life in a few minutes.

Mr. Brodie applied one drop of the empyreumatic oil of tobacco to the tongue of a cat: it occasioned immediate convulsion and an accelerated breathing. Five minutes after, the animal lay down on the side, and presented, from time to time, slight convulsive movements. A quarter of an hour after, it appeared recovered. The same quantity of the oil was applied again, and the animal died in two minutes.

In December, 1833, aided by several gentlemen of the medical class, and occasionally in the presence of other individuals, I made a number of experiments upon cats and other animals with the empyreumatic oil of tobacco.

First Experiment. A small drop of the oil was rubbed on the tongue of a large cat. Immediately the animal uttered piteous cries and began to froth at the mouth. In one minute the pupils of the eyes were dilated and the respiration was laborious; in two and a half minutes, vomiting and staggering; in four minutes, evacuations, the cries continued, the voice hoarse and unnatural; in five minutes, repeated attempts at vomiting; in seven minutes, respiration somewhat improved. At this time a large drop was rubbed upon the tongue. In an instant