GH a Por Hh BV EB. 
ALCOHOL. 
ITS IMPORTANCE AS AN ARTICLE OF MANUFACTURE. 
ALCOHOL, at the present day, occupies a very import- 
ant place in the domestic economy of every family ; not, 
it may be, in the form with which it comes to us from 
the distillery, but disguised under the familiar cognomen 
of many articles in daily consumption, it performs its 
useful functions, unchallenged and unsuspected even by 
the members of the Temperance Society. 
In the materia medica we are indebted to it for chloro- 
form and ether, and many of our most valuable vegetable 
extracts and essences could not be obtained without it 
In the arts we require its aid to dissolve the refractory 
gums and resins; while in the shape of camphene, or 
spirit gas, it yields, with other ingredients, a brilliant and 
economic means of illuminating our dwelling-houses and 
workshops. 
It is true that alcohol, in its abuse as a beverage, is the 
cause of much individual suffering from time to time; 
iustances of this, however, are small compared with the 
universal benefit which it affords; and seeing that it is 
not in the light of a beverage exclusively that I mean to 
treat of it, but also as an important item in our national 
economy, I trust that even the most fastidious will hold 
me blameless if, in the course of my remarks, I endeavor 
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