458 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



eyed transgression. There is a Spanish proverb to the effect that it is 

 easier to keep the devil out than to turn him out, and many dupes of 

 the Good P^amiliar would actually think it an ingratitude to turn him 

 off ; but they should have known better than to admit him when he 

 presented himself with horns and claws. To a normal taste every 

 poison is abhorrent, and with the rarest exceptions the degree of the 

 repulsiveness is proportioned to that of the virulence. In the mouth 

 of a healthy child, rum is a liquid fire ; beer, an emetic ; tea and coffee, 

 bitter decoctions ; tobacco-fumes revolt the stomach of the non-habitiiL 

 Only blind deference to the example of his elders will induce a boy to 

 accustom himself to such abominations ; if he were left to the guid- 

 ance of his natural instincts, intoxication would be anything but an 

 insidious vice. 



With all its ramifications, the poison-habit is a upas-tree which has 

 polluted the well-springs and tainted the very atmosphere of our social 

 life. The woe which the human race owes to alcohol alone is so far 

 beyond description that I will here only record my belief that its total 

 interdiction will form the first commandment in the decalogue of the 

 future. The power of prejudice has its limits. No man, possessed of 

 a vestige of common sense, can read the scientific literatm-e that has 

 accumulated upon the subject, and doubt that even the moderate use of 

 distilled liquors as a beverage amply justifies the belief in the exist- 

 ence of unqualified evils. The effects of tea and coffee drinking are 

 also well understood, but I must call attention to an often overlooked 

 though most important feature of the habit its progressiveness. The 

 original moderate quantum soon palls, and it is this craving of the sys- 

 tem/or the same degree of stimulation which leads us to Johnsonian ex- 

 cesses or to the adoption of a stronger stimulant. Men genei'ally prefer 

 the latter alternative. Coffee, tea, and tobacco pave the way to opium 

 in the East and to alcohol in the West. The same holds true of pun- 

 gent spices. Pepper and mustard form the vanguard of the poison- 

 fiend. They inflame the liver, produce a morbid irritability of the 

 stomach, cause numerous functional derangements by impeding the 

 process of assimilation, and thus become auxiliary in expediting the 

 development of the poison-habit. Whatever irritates the digestive 

 organs or unusually exhausts the vital forces tends to the same effect. 

 Besides, they blunt the susceptibility of the gustatory nerves, and thus 

 diminish our enjoyment of the simple viands that should form our daily 

 food. In trying to heighten that enjoyment, the surfeited gastronome 

 defeats his own purpose : all sweetmeats pall ; the most appetizing 

 dishes he values only as a foil to his caustic condiments, like the Aus- 

 trian peddler who trudges through the flower-leas of the Alpenland in 

 a cloud of nicotine, and to whom the divine afflatus of the morning 

 wind is only so much draught for his tobacco-pipe. 



With a single and not quite explained exception, man is the only 

 animal that resorts to stimulation : a few ruminant mammals cows, 



