768 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



And the heads of that hydra have multiplied. The ancient Greeks 

 knew only one stimulant wine ; the Northmen beer, the American 

 Indians tobacco. We have adopted all three, besides tea from China, 

 opium from India, coffee from Arabia, and fire-water from the labora- 

 tory of the German chemists. To this list the modern French have 

 added chloral and absinthe. Yet this multiformity of the poison-habit 

 is nothing but a normal symptom of its growth ; whenever the quan- 

 titative increase of a stimulant-dose has reached its physical limits, the 

 exhausted system craves a new tonic ; the beer-drinker rallies his nerves 

 with strong coffee, tobacco, or hot spices (pepper-sauce, "herring-salad," 

 etc.), the brandy-drinker with chloral or opium, the opium-eater with 

 arsenic. " It is alcohol that has led me to opium," says Charles Nisard ; 

 " at first I used laudanum only as an antidote." 



Antidote means counter-poison. Supplementary poison would have 

 been the right word ; foreign poison-habits have supplemented rather 

 than superseded our old stimulant-vices. The brewers' argument, that 

 the use of lager-beer would prevent the introduction of opium, is there- 

 fore a bottomless sophism : no stimulant-vice has ever prevented the 

 dissemination of other and stronger poisons. The alcohol-habit has 

 sometimes been supplanted by a passion for opium, chloral, or arsenic, 

 but it can not be exorcised with a weaker stimulant. Beelzebub does 

 not yield to a hobgoblin. Yet nothing is more common in temperance- 

 hospitals than to comfort a converted drunkard with strong black coffee 

 or stimulating drugs, in the hope that the milder tonic might operate 

 as a sort of antidote and neutralize the after-effects of the stronger 

 poison. That idea is an unfortunate delusion. The succedaneum may 

 bring a temporary relief, but it can not assuage the thirst for the 

 stronger tonic, and only serves to perpetuate the stimulant-diathesis 

 it prepares the way for the return of Beelzebub with a legion of ac- 

 complices. On the total-abstinence plan the struggle with the fiend 

 is sharper, but decisive. If, by the help of a strong physical (or 

 moral) constitution, the drunkard can suppress his appetite for a year, 

 he may manage to keep it afterward in a dormant condition ; but 

 only with extreme precaution, for a mere spark is apt to rekindle the 

 flame. 



" It shovdd ever be borne in mind," says Dr. Sewall, " that such is the 

 sensibility of the stomach of the reformed drunkard, that a repetition 

 of the use of alcohol, in the slightest degree and in any form, under any 

 circumstances, revives the appetite ; the blood-vessels of the stomach 

 again become dilated, and the morbid sensibility of the organ is re- 

 produced." 



A young priest from one of the West India Islands once consulted 

 Dr. Rush for an affection of the lungs, and was advised to try the use 

 of garlics. " I am satisfied that your prescription is doing me good," 

 said he at the next interview, " but I wish you would let me steep it 

 in some good old Geneva." " No, indeed, sir ! " said the doctor, with 



