better judgment and the voice of conscience, she is forced on," says my correspondent. "For days on end she has been out of one stupor into another. On two succeeding days of this week she has consumed a quart bottle of strong whisky; the next day, or rather night, when people were asleep, she got hold of some key which was supposed to secure from her a bottle of spirits and another of wine, and within twenty-four hours this was also consumed, no one being able to snatch it from her."

Here I might stop and close the evidence, claiming a verdict against the Spirit of Wine as a poisoner. But there are minor counts in the indictment; and to make the case more complete, suffer me to state these very briefly.

The drinker, escaping or surviving the major results, is still liable to serious injury, and of various kinds.

1. Absorbed into the blood, unchanged, alcohol corrupts or poisons that important fluid. It becomes less coagulable—a state favorable to the occurrence of hemorrhages, and unfavorable to the arrest of loss of blood; unfavorable also to healthy nutrition. Besides, it assumes more or less of the venous character; holding far more than it ought of waste material, and so becoming "poisoned"-to use the ordinary language of the schools. The alcohol has done this, as we shall see; taking the oxygen of the lungs to itself, and leaving no sufficient supply for oxidating the "waste." This "waste" so retained, seems to be converted in part into fat-waiting to be burnt; and the blood of drunkards, accordingly, is

8

found to contain an unusual amount of fatty contents

(this fat not burnt)—apt to take the place of the healthy tissues, as will be immediately stated.

Poison the blood, and you poison the whole man. And do we not find the drunkard soon showing plain signs of this?ill nourished, flabby, weak, watery in his tissues, sodden and sad in color. Sometimes he grows lean and lank; sometimes he gathers unhealthy fatness the fat being put down in wrong places, and found where no fat should be. Internal accumulations of this redundancy oppress the vital organs; and the partial conversion of muscular and other tissues into fat, constitutes one of the most serious diseases to which mankind are exposed. With such degeneration of the heart, for example, our life is not worth an hour's purchase. We may at any moment fall down dead. And no single agent does half the work of alcohol in causing such degeneration.

2. Other heart-diseases, as well as aneurisms, and varicose veins, have also their origin, very frequently, in the free and sustained use of alcohol. The bloodvessels cannot with impunity bear a constant, unnatural, and inordinate stimulus, with a consequently hurried circulation.

3. Alcohol's special action on the brain and nervous system we have already seen (page 28). The functional mischief is manifest; and there is good reason to believe that an injurious change takes place in the structure too. When an anatomist wishes to preserve a brain or spinal cord, for the purpose of dissection, he places it in strong spirits; and it grows firm and hard there. Why

may not something of a like change take place during life, when the organ is from time to time saturated with alcoholic blood, as in the case of the drunkard it cannot fail to be? And is it wise to harden, or to run the risk of hardening, a living brain? Will that benefit a living nerve, or nervous centre, which preserves it when dead?

Besides, with disordered blood, disordered circulation, and disordered brain, obviously this latter organ must be peculiarly liable to the occurrence of dangerous disease -such as inflammation, congestion, and hemorrhage. Every one knows how often thus the drunkard is taken away. Sometimes, too, a creeping palsy comes on. And epilepsy is one of the most frequent and formidable complications of habitual intemperance.

On

4. The stomach is, of course, primarily affected. its lining membrane the alcohol acts as a stimulant; and may at first do little more, except when in excessive quantity and strength, than excite and exalt its func

"Does- drink freely?" "Oh, yes. - and stands it well. He is a hard-headed fellow." What a depth of hidden meaning there is in many of the common phrases of life! Hard-headed? Yes; thick outside, and hard within. That the brain is really hardened, seems a fair conclusion from experiments of Liebig on the power of alcohol to displace the natural and healthy water-constituent of all animal tissues. Many tissues and organs of our bodies consist normally of from one-half to three-fourths of water; and when these are immersed in alcohol, more than half the water is displaced, owing to the capillary attraction of the tissues for alcohol and water being less than for water alone. Hence, doubtless, in part at least, the earthy precipitation so common in the blood-vessels of the intemperate - the water in their textures being too scanty to keep certain saline matters In solution.

tion. But such simple action proves very temporary, under habitual repetitions of a liberal dose. Congestion and inflammation take the place of simple excitement. Instead of digestion being favored and quickened, it is retarded and perverted · all the thousand and one evils of dyspepsia setting in; while, by an acute inflammatory attack, danger to life may be at any time superadded.

After a time, the drunkard comes to have no stomach at all. As a digester, its occupation is gone. Food is rejected, along with foul, loathsome secretions from the diseased lining membrane. The skinned fiery lips and sour water-brash of the drunkard are proverbial. The organ ceases to be a concocter of chyme, and degenerates into a kind of sponge, through which the alcohol filters into the general frame. The man lives no longer on food, but like a snipe on suction.

5. Next to the stomach, the liver suffers. The alcohol, absorbed and passing at once into the veins of that organ, arouses an increased activity in its working. And well it may; for by its continued presence in the onward blood, it prevents the effectual burning off of the noxious effete matter, or waste (page 17), which then falls to be disposed of in unusual and unnatural quantity by the liver and other excretory organs. And the natural consequence of this accumulated labor is the invasion of disease in various forms. Congestion, inflammation, and functional disorder are common occurrences in the drunkard's flank; seldom can he say that his "withers are unwrung;" and ere long a chronic structural change will have set in, so peculiar to himself as to be ordinarily

recognised as "the drunkard's liver" or the "gin liver"-in great measure due probably to the almost constant actual presence of alcohol in the substance of the organ.

The advocates of alcohol, however, demur to all this, and protest that their client cannot in justice be accused of constant and habitual action against any part of the frame, seeing that it is so very rapidly got rid of-partly by burning in the lungs, partly through the organs of excretion. And by way of strengthening their plea, they go on to admit, that were alcohol to be constantly in the blood the result must be fatal, or at least most formidable. Now, we admit that alcohol is "worked off" with great rapidity; far more quickly than almost any thing else ordinarily swallowed by man. And from that circumstance we are simple enough to suppose, that man's frame does not wish for, and by natural instinct resents its presence. There would seem to be other things than a "vacuum" that nature abhors; and alcohol is one of them. She employs all her energies to get rid of the unwelcome intruder, no doubt; and strains 1er excretory organs in doing so, endangering them with disease through overwork. But still the success is far from instantaneous. Many hours ordinarily elapse ere all is clear. For instance, after a tolerably hard drink a man goes to bed, and sleeps heavily, if not soundly, for eight or ten hours. On rising then, his kidneys plainly tell that the alcohol was plentiful within him. just before. At breakfast, the morning dram may renew the supply. In the forenoon comes the biscuit, with