CENTURY VIII. 19 



Experiments in consort touching drunkenness. 



723. It hath been observed by the ancients, and is 

 yet believed, that the sperm of drunken men is un 

 fruitful. 1 The cause is, for that it is over-moistened, 

 and wanteth spissitude : and we have a merry saying, 

 that they that go drunk to bed get daughters. 



724. Drunken men are taken with a plain defect 

 or destitution in voluntary motion. They reel ; they 

 tremble ; they cannot stand, nor speak strongly. The 

 cause is, for that the spirits of the wine oppress the 

 spirits animal, and occupate part of the place where 

 they are ; and so make them weak to move. And 

 therefore drunken men are apt to fall asleep : and 

 opiates and stupefactives (as poppy, henbane, hemlock, 

 &c.) induce a kind of drunkenness, by the grossness. 

 of their vapour ; as wine doth by the quantity of the 

 vapour. Besides, they rob the spirits animal of their 

 matter, whereby they are nourished : for the spirits 

 of the wine prey upon it as well as they : and so they 

 make the spirits less supple and apt to move. 



725. Drunken men imagine every thing turneth 

 round ; they imagine also that things come upon them ; 

 they see not well things afar off ; those things that 

 they see near hand they see out of their place ; and 

 (sometimes) they see things double. The cause of 

 the imagination that things turn round is, for that 

 the spirits themselves turn, being compressed by the 

 vapour of the wine (for any liquid body upon com 

 pression turneth, as we see in water) ; and it is all 

 one to the sight, whether the visual spirits move, or 



1 For this and most of the statements in the next three paragraphs, see 

 Arist. Prob. iii. 4, 5, 9, 10, and 12. 



