760 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE KEMEDIES OF NATURE. 



By FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D. 



THE ALCOHOL-HABIT. 

 I. 



IN the tragedy of errors, called the history of the human race, igno- 

 rance has often done as much mischief as sin ; and the erroneous 

 theories of the cause and, consequently, the proper cure of the 

 Poison - Vice have caused nearly as much misery as that vice itself. 

 They have made intemperance an all but incurable evil ; they have 

 helped to originate the dogma of natural depravity, the confidence in 

 the efficacy of anti-natural remedies, and that baneful mistrust in the 

 competence of our natural instincts that still vitiates our whole system 

 of physical education. 



Physiology is a true thaumaturgic science a description of won- 

 ders. The veriest savage must dimly recognize the fact that man 

 can not measure his cunning against the wisdom of the Creator, and, 

 if the development of science should continue at the present rate of 

 progress for a thousand generations, the accumulated knowledge of 

 all those ages would convince its inheritors that a blade of grass is a 

 greater marvel than all the products of human skill. No human ar- 

 tificer can imitate the mechanism of a motor-nerve ; the structural 

 devices which the microscope reveals in the tissue of the meanest moss 

 are perfect hyperboles of wisdom and plastic skill. But the greatest 

 miracles of that wisdom manifest themselves in the self-protecting 

 contrivances of a living organism. Our nervous system performs its 

 functions by a combination of alarm-signals that apprise us of an 

 infinite variety of external dangers and internal needs, in a language 

 that has a distinct expression for every want of our alimentary and 

 respiratory organs, for every distress of our tissues, sinews, and mus- 

 cles, for every needed reaction against the influence of abnormal cir- 

 cumstances ; our skin protests against every injurious degree of heat 

 and cold, our lungs against atmospheric impurities, our eyes against 

 the intrusion of the smallest insect ; the human body is a house that 

 cleanses its own chambers and heats its own stoves, opens and shuts 

 its windows at proper intervals, expels mischievous intruders, and 

 promptly informs its tenant of every external peril and internal dis- 

 order. 



How, then, can it be explained that the wonderful architect of 

 that living house has provided no better safeguard against such a 

 dreadful danger as the alcohol-habit ? Millions of our fellow-men 

 complain that they owe their temporal and eternal ruin to the prompt- 

 ings of an irresistible appetite as if Nature herself had lured them 



