THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. 767 



raent followed as a matter of course. Every poison-vice is progressive, 

 and, soon after the introduction of a new stimulant, the majority of in- 

 dividual consumers will find that the habit "grows upon them," as our 

 language aptly expresses it. The direct effect of the poison, heredi- 

 tary influences, etc., induce a growing depression of vital energy, 

 which, in turn, leads to an increased demand for the means of stimu- 

 lation. This want is met in a twofold way : 1. By a direct increase 

 of the quantity or strength of any special stimulant ; 2. By the prog- 

 ress from a milder to a more virulent poison of a diffei'ent kind. 



In Prussia, Scotland, Denmark (as well as in some of our Eastern 

 States), actual drunkenness (i. e., intoxication followed by riotous con- 

 duct) has apparently decreased, while the revenue register shows an un- 

 doubted increase in the per capita consumption of alcoholic liquors. 

 This does not prove that our topers are growing less vicious, but that 

 they are growing more practical ; intermittent rioters have become 

 "steady hard-drinkers." In the Calmuck steppes, whose barrenness 

 has forced the inhabitants to preserve the primitive habits of their an- 

 cestors, a little grain is cultivated here and there in the river-valleys, 

 and during the winter migration the herders carry bags full of rye 

 from camp to camp, and bake bread whenever they are short of meat 

 or milk. But at the return of the harvest-season they have both meat 

 and bread, and utilize the surplus of last year's grain by brewing it 

 into a sort of beer, and indulging in a grand carousal i. e., they get 

 beastly drunk, but only once a year. The Bacchanalia and Symposia 

 of the ancient Greeks were monthly revels in honor of some favorite 

 deity ; and even during the middle ages many of the poor Scotch lairds 

 brewed ale only when they expected a guest. To get " as drunk as a 

 lord " was the highest ambition of poor Hodge, but an ambition which 

 he could not often gratify, though he sometimes stinted himself in 

 bread in order to drink his fill 



"At ember-eves and holy ales." 



By-and-by, however, wages improved, and ales became more fre- 

 quent and more decidedly unholy, though perhaps less obstreperous, 

 since continual practice enables our topers to " carry their liquor " as 

 discreetly as the Baron of Bradwardine. The most respectable hotel 

 in Geneva, Switzerland, allows its male employes a daily pour Loire of 

 six quarts of wine ; Dr. Buchanan, of Manchester, speaks of English 

 mechanics of the " better class " w T ho take a glass of gin w T ith every 

 meal ; and I am sure of understating the truth if I say that in the 

 larger cities of Germany and North America every popular beer-shop 

 has among its customers dozens of "regulars" who drink the year 

 round a daily minimum of two gallons of lager-beer. The poison- 

 mania which attacked our ancestors in the form of an intermittent 

 passion has grown into an insatiable hunger ; the tempting serpent 

 has become a strangling hydra. 



