764 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Munford's Elixir ; the coffee-cup leads to the pipe, and the pipe to the 

 pot-house. Wherever the nicotine-habit has been introduced, the 

 alcohol-habit soon follows. The Spanish Saracens abstained from all 

 poisons, and for seven centuries remained the teachers of Europe in 

 war as well as in science and the arts of peace freemen in the fullest 

 sense of the word, men whom a powerful foe could at last expel and 

 exterminate, but never subdue. The Turks, having learned to smoke 

 tobacco, soon learned to eat opium, and have since been taught to eat 

 dust at the feet of the Muscovite. When the first Spaniards came to 

 South America they found in the Patagonian highlands a tribe of 

 warlike natives who were entirely ignorant of any stimulating sub- 

 stance, and who have ever since defied the sutlers and soldiers of their 

 neighbors, while the tobacco-smoking red-skins of the North suc- 

 cumbed to fire-water. In the South-Sea Islands, too, European poisons 

 have done more mischief than gunpowder : wherever the natives had 

 been fond of fermented cocoa-milk, their children became still fonder 

 of rum ; while the Papuans, whose forefathers had never practiced 

 stimulation, have always shown an aversion to drunkenness, and in 

 spite of their ethnological inferiority have managed to survive their 

 aboriginal neighbors. International statistics have revealed the re- 

 markable fact that the alcohol-vice is most prevalent not in the most 

 ignorant or most despotic countries (Russia, Austria, and Turkey), 

 nor where alcoholic drinks of the most seductive kind are cheapest 

 (Greece, Spain, and Asia Minor), but in the commercial countries that 

 use the greatest variety of milder stimulants Great Britain, Western 

 France, and Eastern North America. Hence the apparent paradox 

 that drunkenness is most frequent among the most civilized nations. 

 The tendency of every stimulant-habit is toward a stronger tonic. 

 Claude Bernard, the famous French physiologist, noticed that the 

 opium-vice recruits its female victims chiefly from the ranks of the 

 veteran coffee-drinkers ; in Savoy and the adjoining Swiss cantons 

 kirsch-wasser prepares the way for arsenic ; in London and St. Peters- 

 burg many ether-drinkers have relinquished high wines for a more 

 concentrated poison ; and in Constantinople the Persian opium-shops 

 have eclipsed the popularity of the Arabian coffee-houses. 



We see, then, that every poison-habit is progressive, and thus real- 

 ize the truth that there is no such thing as a harmless stimulant, be- 

 cause the incipience of every unnatural appetite is the first stage of 

 a progressive disease. 



The facts from which we draw these conclusions have long been fa- 

 miliar to scientific specialists, and have separately been commented 

 upon ; but in science, as in morals, the progress from special to general 

 inferences is often amazingly slow. The ancient Athenians would have 

 shuddered at the idea of selling and buying a burgher of their own 

 city, but had no hesitation to enslave the Greeks of the neighboring 

 states. The Romans enfranchised the citizens of Latium, and at last 



