It nevertheless appears to be true. A traveller relates, that, when Russian troops are about to start upon a march in a very cold region, no grog is allowed to be served to them; and when the men are drawn up, ready to move, the corporals smell the breath of every man, and send back to quarters all who have been drinking. The reason is, that men who start under the influence of liquor are the first to succumb to the cold, and the likeliest to be frostbitten. It is the uniform experience of the hunters and trappers in the northern provinces of North America, and of the Rocky Mountains, that alcohol diminishes their power to resist cold. This whole magazine could be filled with testimony on this point. Still less is alcohol a strength-giver. Every man that ever trained for a supreme exertion of strength knows that Tom Sayers spoke the truth when he said: "I'm no teetotaler: but when I've any business to do, there's nothing like water and the dumb-bells." Richard Cobden, whose powers were subjected to a far severer trial than a pugilist ever dreamed of, whose labors by night and day, during the corn-law struggle, were excessive and continuous beyond those of any other member of the House of Commons, bears similar testimony: "The more work I have had to do, the more I have resorted to the pump and the teapot." On this branch of the subject, all the testimony is against alcoholic drinks. Whenever the point has been tested, and it has often been tested, — the truth has been confirmed, that he who would do his very best and most, whether in rowing, lifting, running, watching, mowing, climbing, fighting, speaking, or writing, must not admit into his system one drop of alcohol. Trainers used to allow their men a pint of beer per day, and severe trainers half a pint; but now the knowing ones have cut off even that moderate allowance, and brought their men down to cold water, and not too much of that, the soundest digesters requiring little liquid of any kind. Mr. Bigelow, by his happy publication lately of the cor rect version of Franklin's Autobiography, has called to mind the famous beer passage in that immortal work: "I drank only water; the other workmen, near fifty in number, were great guzzlers of beer. On occasion I carried up and down stairs a large form of types in each hand, when others carried but one in both hands." I have a long list of references on this point; but, in these cricketing, boat-racing, prizefighting days, the fact has become too familiar to require proof. The other morning, Horace Greeley, teetotaler, came to his office after an absence of several days, and found letters and arrears of work that would have been appalling to any man but him. He shut himself in at ten, A. M., and wrote steadily, without leaving his room, till eleven, P. M.,-thirteen hours. When he had finished, he had some little difficulty in getting down stairs, owing to the stiffness of his joints, caused by the long inaction; but he was as fresh and smiling the next morning as though he had done nothing extraordinary. Are any of us drinkers of beer and wine capable of such a feat? Then, during the war, when he was writing his history, he performed every day, for two years, two days' work, - one, from nine to four, on his book; the other, from seven to eleven, upon the Tribune; and, in addition, he did more than would tire an ordinary man in the way of correspondence and public speaking. I may also remind the reader, that the clergyman who, of all others in the United States, expends most vitality, both with tongue and pen, and who does his work with least fatigue and most gayety of heart, is another of Franklin's "water Americans." If, then, wine does not nourish us, does not assist the decomposition of food, does not warm, does not strengthen, what does it do? We all know that, when we drink alcoholic liquor, it affects the brain immediately. Most of us are aware, We owe to Mr. Bigelow the restoration of this strong Franklinian word, The common editions have it "drinkers." too, that it affects the brain injuriously, farmers, gathered on the stoop of a lessening at once its power to discern and discriminate. If I, at this ten, A. M., full of interest in this subject, and eager to get my view of it upon paper, were to drink a glass of the best port, Madeira, or sherry, or even a glass of lager-beer, I should lose the power to continue in three minutes; or, if I persisted in going on, I should be pretty sure to utter paradox and spurts of extravagance, which would not bear the cold review of to-morrow morning. Any one can try this experiment. Take two glasses of wine, and then immediately apply yourself to the hardest task your mind ever has to perform, and you will find you cannot do it. Let any student, just before he sits down to his mathematics, drink a pint of the purest beer, and he will be painfully conscious of loss of power. Or, let any salesman, before beginning with a difficult but important customer, perform the idiotic action of "taking a drink," and he will soon discover that his ascendency over his customer is impaired. In some way this alcohol, of which we are so fond, gets to the brain and injures it. We are conscious of this, and we can observe it. It is among the winedrinking classes of our fellow-beings that absurd, incomplete, and reactionary ideas prevail. The receptive, the curious, the candid, the trustworthy brains, those that do not take things for granted, and yet are ever open to conviction, such heads are to be found on the shoulders of men who drink little or none of these seductive fluids. How we all wondered that England should think so erroneously, and adhere to its errors so obstinately, during our late war! Mr. Gladstone has in part explained the mystery. The adults of England, he said, in his famous wine speech, drink, on an average, three hundred quarts of beer each per annum! Now, it is physically impossible for a human brain, muddled every day with a quart of beer, to correctly hold correct opinions, or appropriate pure knowledge. Compare the conversation of a group of Vermont country store on a rainy afternoon, with that which you may hear in the farmers' room of a market-town inn in England! The advantage is not wholly with the Vermonters; by no means, for there is much in human nature besides the brain and the things of the brain. But in this one particular — in the topics of conversation, in the interest manifested in large and important subjects—the water-drinking Vermonters are to the beer-drinking Englishmen what Franklin was to the London printers. It is beyond the capacity of a well-beered brain even to read the pamphlet on Liberty and Necessity which Franklin wrote in those times. The few experiments which have been made, with a view to trace the course of alcohol in the living system, all confirm what all drinkers feel, that it is to the brain alcohol hurries when it has passed the lips. Some innocent dogs have suffered and died in this investigation. Dr. Percy, a British physician, records, that he injected two ounces and a half of alcohol into the stomach of a dog, which caused its almost instant death. The dog dropped very much as he would if he had been struck upon the head with a club. The experimenter, without a moment's unnecessary delay, removed the animal's brain, subjected it to distillation, and extracted from it a surprising quantity of alcohol, -a larger proportion than he could distil from the blood or liver. The alcohol seemed to have rushed to the brain; it was a blow upon the head which killed the dog. Dr. Percy introduced into the stomachs of other dogs smaller quantities of alcohol, not sufficient to cause death; but upon killing the dogs, and subjecting the brain, the blood, the bile, the liver, and other portions of the body, to distillation, he invariably found more alcohol in the brain than in the same weight of other organs. He injected alcohol into the blood of dogs, which caused death; but the deadly effect was produced, not upon the substance of the blood, but upon the brain. His experiments go far toward explaining why the drinking of alcoholic liquors does not sensibly retard digestion. It seems that, when we take wine at dinner, the alcohol does not remain in the stomach, but is immediately absorbed into the blood, and swiftly conveyed to the brain and other organs. If one of those "four-bottle men" of the last generation had fallen down dead, after boozing till past midnight, and he had been treated as Dr. Percy treated the dogs, his brain, his liver, and all the other centres of power, would have yielded alcohol in abundance; his blood would have smelt of it; his flesh would have contained it; but there would have been very little in the stomach. Those men were able to drink four, six, and seven bottles of wine at a sitting, because the sitting lasted four, six, and seven hours, which gave time for the alcohol to be distributed over the system. But instances have occurred of laboring men who have kept themselves steadily drunk for forty-eight hours, and then died. The bodies of two such were dissected some years ago in England, and the food which they had eaten at the beginning of the debauch was undigested. It had been preserved in alcohol as we preserve snakes. Once, and only once, in the lifetime of man, an intelligent human eye has been able to look into the living stomach, and watch the process of digestion. In 1822, at the United States military post of Michilimackinac, Alexis St. Martin, a Canadian of French extraction, received accidentally a heavy charge of duck-shot in his side, while he was standing one yard from the muzzle of the gun. The wound was frightful. One of the lungs protruded, and from an enormous aperture in the stomach the food recently eaten was oozing. Dr. William Beaumont, U. S. A., the surgeon of the post, was notified, and dressed the wound. In exactly one year from that day the young man was well enough to get out of doors, and walk about the fort; and he continued to improve in health and strength, until he was as strong and hardy as most of his race. He married, became the father of a large family, and performed for many years the laborious duties appertaining to an officer's servant at a frontier post. But the aperture into the stomach never closed, and the patient would not submit to the painful operation by which such wounds are sometimes closed artificially. He wore a compress arranged by the doctor, without which his dinner was not safe after he had eaten it. By a most blessed chance it happened that this Dr. William Beaumont, stationed there on the outskirts of creation, was an intelligent, inquisitive human being, who perceived all the value of the opportunity afforded him by this unique event. He set about improving that opportunity. He took the young man into his service, and, at intervals, for eight years, he experimented upon him. He alone among the sons of men has seen liquid flowing into the stomach of a living person while yet the vessel was at the drinker's lips. Through the aperture (which remained two and a half inches in circumference) he could watch the entire operation of digestion, and he did so hundreds of times. If the man's stomach ached, he could look into it and see what was the matter; and, having found out, he would drop a rectifying pill into the aperture. He ascertained the time it takes to digest each of the articles of food commonly eaten, and the effects of all the usual errors in eating and drinking. In 1833 he published a thin volume, at Plattsburg on Lake Champlain, in which the results of thousands of experiments and observations were only too briefly stated. He appears not to have heard of teetotalism, and hence all that he says upon the effects of alcoholic liquors is free from the suspicion which the arrogance and extravagance of some teetotalers have thrown over much that has been published on this subject. With a mind unbiassed, Dr. Beaumont, peering into the stomach of this stout Canadian, notices that a glass of brandy causes the coats of that organ to assume the same inflamed appearance as when he had been very angry, or much frightened, or had overeaten, or had had the flow of perspiration suddenly checked. In other words, brandy played the part of a foe in his system, not that of a friend; it produced effects which were morbid, not healthy. Nor did it make any material difference whether St. Martin drank brandy, whiskey, wine, cider, or beer, except so far as one was stronger than the other. "Simple water," says Dr. Beaumont, "is perhaps the only fluid that is called for by the wants of the economy. The artificial drinks are probably all more or less injurious; some more so than others, but none can claim exemption from the general charge. Even tea and coffee, the common beverages of all classes of people, have a tendency to debilitate the digestive organs. ... The whole class of alcoholic liquors .may be considered as narcotics, producing very little difference in their ultimate effects upon the system." He ascertained too (not guessed, or inferred, but ascertained, watch in hand) that such things as mustard, horse-radish, and pepper retard digestion. At the close of his invaluable work Dr. Beaumont appends a long list of "Inferences," among which are the following: "That solid food of a certain texture is easier of digestion than fluid; that stimulating condiments are injurious to the healthy system; that the use of ardent spirits always produces disease of the stomach if persisted in; that water, ardent spirits, and most other fluids, are not affected by the gastric juice, but pass from the stomach soon after they have been received." One thing appears to have much surprised Dr. Beaumont, and that was, the degree to which St. Martin's system could be disordered without his being much inconvenienced by it. Af ter drinking hard every day for eight or ten days, the stomach would show alarming appearances of disease; and yet the man would only feel a slight headache, and a general dulness and languor. If there is no comfort for drinkers in Dr. Beaumont's precious little volume, it must be also confessed, that neither the dissecting-knife nor the microscope afford us the least countenance. All that has yet been ascertained of the effects of alcohol by the dissection of the body favors the extreme position of the extreme teetotalers. A brain alcoholized the microscope proves to be a brain diseased. Blood which has absorbed alcohol is unhealthy blood, the microscope shows it. The liver, the heart, and other organs, which have been accustomed to absorb alcohol, all give testimony under the microscope which produces discomfort in the mind of one who likes a glass of wine, and hopes to be able to continue the enjoyment of it. The dissecting-knife and the microscope so far have nothing to say for us, ing at all: they are dead against us. - noth Of all the experiments which have yet been undertaken with a view to trace the course of alcohol through the human system, the most important were those made in Paris a few years ago by Professors Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy, distinguished physicians and chemists. Frenchmen have a way of co-operating with one another, both in the investigation of scientific questions and in the production of literature, which is creditable to their civilization and beneficial to the world. The experiments conducted by these gentlemen produced the remarkable effect of causing the editor of a leading periodical to confess to the public that he was not infallible. In 1855 the Westminster Review contained an article by Mr. Lewes, in which the teetotal side of these questions was effectively ridiculed; but, in 1861, the same periodical reviewed the work of the French professors just named, and honored itself by appending a note in which it said: "Since the date of our former article, scientific research has brought to light important facts which necessarily modify the opinions we then expressed concerning the rôle of alcohol in the animal body." Those facts were revealed or indicated in the experiments of Messrs. Lallemand, Perrin, and Du- and men suffered in the cause. roy. In the moisture exhaled from the pores of a Ether and chloroform, their mode drunken dog's skin, these cunning of operation; why and how they ren- Frenchmen detected the alcohol which der the living body insensible to pain had made him drunk. They proved it to under the surgeon's knife; what be- exist in the breath of a man, at six o'clock comes of them after they have per- in the evening, who had drunk a bottle formed that office, these were the of claret for breakfast at half past ten in points which engaged their attention, the morning. They also proved that, at and in the investigation of which they midnight, the alcohol of that bottle of spent several years. They were re- wine was still availing itself of other warded, at length, with the success due avenues of escape. They proved that to patience and ingenuity. By the aid when alcohol is taken into the system of ingenious apparatus, after experi- in any of its dilutions, wine, cider, ments almost numberless, they felt them- spirits, or beer, ― the whole animal econselves in a position to demonstrate, omy speedily busies itself with its exthat, when ether is inhaled, it is imme- pulsion, and continues to do so until diately absorbed by the blood, and by it has expelled it. The lungs exhale the blood is conveyed to the brain. If it; the pores of the skin let out a little a surgeon were to commit such a breach of it; the kidneys do their part; and of professional etiquette as to cut off a by whatever other road an enemy can patient's head at the moment of com- escape it seeks the outer air. Like plete insensibility, he would be able to ether, alcohol enters the body, makes a distil from the brain a great quantity disturbance there, and goes out of the of ether. But it is not usual to take body, leaving it no richer than it found that liberty except with dogs. The it. It is a guest that departs, after inhalation, therefore, proceeds until the giving a great deal of trouble, without surgical operation is finished, when the paying his bill or "remembering" the handkerchief is withdrawn from the servants. Now, to make the demonstrapatient's face, and he is left to regain tion complete, it would be necessary to his senses. What happens then? What take some unfortunate man or dog, becomes of the ether? These learned give him a certain quantity of alcohol, Frenchmen discovered that most of it say one ounce, and afterwards disgoes out of the body by the road it til from his breath, perspiration, &c., came in at, - the lungs. It was breathed the whole quantity that he had swal in; it is breathed out. The rest es- lowed. This has not been done; it capes by other channels of egress; it never will be done; it is obviously imall escapes, and it escapes unchanged! possible. Enough has been done to That is the point; it escapes without justify these conscientious and indefathaving left anything in the system. All igable inquirers in announcing, as a that can be said of it is, that it entered thing susceptible of all but demonstrathe body, created morbid conditions in tion, that alcohol contributes to the the body, and then left the body. It human system nothing whatever, but cost these patient men years to arrive leaves it undigested and wholly unat this result; but any one who has changed. They are fully persuaded ever had charge of a patient that has (and so will you be, reader, if you read been rendered insensible by ether will their book) that, if you take into your find little difficulty in believing it. system an ounce of alcohol, the whole ounce leaves the system within fortyeight hours, just as good alcohol as it went in. Having reached this demonstration, the experimenters naturally thought of applying the same method and similar apparatus to the investigation of the effects of alcohol, which is the fluid nearest resembling ether and chloroform. Dogs There is a boy in Pickwick who swallowed a farthing. "Out with it," said the father; and it is to be pre |