652 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Absinthe should be under the control of the Sale of Poisons Act, and 

 no person ought to be able to get it in any form at all without signing 

 a book and going through all the necessary formality for the purchase 

 of a poison. To move the country to a due regard for its own inter- 

 ests as well as for the interests of the ignorant and deluded toxico- 

 maniacs who indulge in absinthe, is the duty of all honest and truthful 

 men. 



It is my business in the remaining part of this communication to 

 deal with a question which springs out of the practice of using lethal 

 agents, and with which the minds of the thinking community are 

 sorely exercised. The question I refer to is Whether the use of 

 these agents springs from a natural desire on the part of man, and of 

 animals lower than man, for such agents ; or whether it springs from a 

 perversion or unnatural provocation acquired and transmitted in heredi- 

 tary line, a toxico-mania, in plain and decisive language. 



In respect to the idea that these agents are demanded by living 

 animals as necessities of their transitory existence and residence on 

 this earth, it must be obvious that the argument, as so stated, is based 

 on the desire which has been impressed on the mind of the reasoners 

 by the agents themselves. It is quite certain that men, and all the 

 lower animals, can live without the supposed aid afforded by these 

 substances, and that when they are not known life goes on smoothly 

 and happily enough in their absence. They therefore are only pleaded 

 for when they have made themselves felt, which looks strangely like 

 an artificial pleading for an artificial as apart from a natural thing. 

 Children do not plead for them ; men who have been educated without 

 them do not plead for them ; animals do not beg for them ; none ask 

 for them until by education they have learned to use them. At first 

 all rebel at them, and only after a fiery trial, during which they get 

 over repugnance, acquire a liking to them, after which the liking may 

 run into desire, and desire into infatuation. 



Again, if these agents were natural for the wants of man and 

 animal, they would not reasonably be expected to be left so far away, 

 as they are left, from the immediate reach and possession of man and 

 animal. To secure them for man and animal they have to be pro- 

 duced ; to produce them, requires human ingenuity and skill, knowl- 

 edge, science, and in some cases, as in the case of alcohol and alcoholic 

 beverages, a very considerable degree of skill and an enormous amount 

 of skilled labor. It is true that two of these substances, absinthium 

 and opium, lie nearer at hand than the others, might be gathered and 

 utilized by men in their savage state, and might be plucked and eaten 

 even by beasts of the field. But the fact really seems to be that these 

 very simples have not come into the possession of man for the service 

 of the human family until by art the educated of the human race have 

 learned the mode of use ; while the lower animals, instead of instinc- 

 tively finding them out and claiming the advantages which come from 



