THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. 765 



all the natives of the Italian Peninsula, but kidnapped all the "barba- 

 rians " they could lay their hands upon ! The French and Spaniards 

 of the last century were deeply shocked at the indiscriminate man- 

 hunts of the Algerian corsairs, and even refused to retaliate on the 

 men of Argel, because, in spite of their black turpitude, many of those 

 misbelievers had something like a Caucasian skin on their faces, but 

 those same moralists thought it perfectly proper to kidnap and cow- 

 hide the black sons of Ham ; but, since the children of a negress were 

 as salable as their mothers, and miscegenation and mistakes could not 

 always be avoided, it sometimes happened that the auctioneer got 

 hold of a white slave, till William Wilberforce at last arrived at the 

 grand conclusion that all human slavery is wrong. More than a hun- 

 dred years ago, Dr. Boerhaave entered an emphatic protest against 

 rum, French high-wines, and "other adulterated spirits," but con- 

 fessed a predilection for a drop of good Schiedam. Dr. Zimmermann 

 objected to all distilled liquors, but recommended a glass of good 

 wine, and a plate of beer-soup the latter a Prussian invention, and 

 one of those outrages on human nature that embittered the childhood 

 of Frederick the Great. The hygienic reformers of our own country 

 denounce intoxicating drinks of all kinds, but connive at mild ale, 

 cider, opiates, narcotics, and patent " bitters." The plan has been 

 thoroughly tried, and has thoroughly failed. We have found that 

 the road to the rum-shop is paved with "mild stimulants," and that 

 every bottle of medical bitters is apt to get the vender a permanent 

 customer. We have found that cider and mild ale lead to strong ale, 

 to lager-beer, and finally to rum, and the truth at last dawns upon us 

 that the only safe, consistent, and effective plan is Total Abstinence 

 from all Poisons. 



We have seen that the poison-habit is a upas-tree that reproduces 

 its germs from the smallest seeds ; but where did the first seed come 

 from ? How did the life-blighting delusion happen to take root in the 

 human mind ? " Man is the only suicidal animal," says Dr. Haller, 

 " and the first opium-eater was probably some life-weary wretch who 

 tried to end his misery by a lethal dose, and found that his poison 

 could be used as a temporary nepenthe." The physiologist Camper 

 ascribes the introduction of alcoholic liquors to the experiments of un- 

 principled physicians ; but the most plausible theory is the conjecture 

 of Fabio Colonna, an Italian scientist of the seventeenth century. 

 " Before people used wine," says he, " they probably drank sweet must, 

 and preserved it, like oil, in jars or skins. But in a warm climate a 

 saccharine fluid is apt to ferment, and some avaricious housekeeper 

 may have drunk that spoiled stuff till she became fond of it, and thus 

 learned to prefer wine to must." Not a compliment to human nature, 

 but quite probable enough to be true. An animal would have preferred 

 water to spoiled grape- juice, but even at a very early period of his de- 

 velopment the Nature-despising homo sapiens may have learned to 



