]16 ALCOHOLIC LIQUOKS. 



done my patients good. I have never seen a patient recover under 

 their use, that I had not good reason to think would have recovered 

 without them. I have frequently been called to see feeble persons, 

 especially females, who had been taking win v , beer, brandy and the 

 like for years, to strengthen them, and still they remained weak; and 

 1 have found that such patients improved when they were required 

 to live on a proper diet and discontinue their stiinulants. So far 

 from being strengthened they had actually been debilitated by their 

 use." 



The celebrated Dr. Edmunds, of London, makes the following 

 statement in his writings: "The cases in which I use alcohol 

 in my practice I confess become less and less frequent every day. 

 And I should feel that I lost very little were 1 deprived of it 

 altogether." It is probable that there are conditions or states, in some 

 few diseases, where stimulants of this character may do some good ; 

 but the great difficulty is to know exactly when this condition or 

 state occurs, and there is usually more or less disagreement on this 

 point among physicians. And when they do not effect good, they 

 usually aggravate the disease and result in harm, for all undue 

 excitement is necessarily followed by corresponding depression, and 

 thus thousands are sent to a speedy grave in consequence of it. 

 How can it be otherwise? Can a man who is prostrated to the very 

 lowest ebb of life stand a course of stimulation whose reaction, all 

 experience shows, will prostrate a well man ? Take for example a 

 most critical case, in which the patient is for days in a state where 

 he can barely live without stimulants, and now let him be given 

 these, and an unnatural state of excitement will follow, or a degree 

 of activity above that which the exhausted organism is capable of 

 sustaining; as a necessary consequence, corresponding depression 

 must follow, -and if the patient was barely at the living point before 

 the prostration, which is sure to follow, he must now sink below 

 that point. It may be asked, can not this state of excitement be 

 kept up by the use of stimulants for days, until the patient recovers ? 

 If space would admit, we might logically show that this can rarely, 

 if ever be done. 



Alcoholic Liquors afford Neither Muscular 

 Strength nor Nutriment It is a law of the animal economy 

 that any substance or food must, when taken into the body, be 

 changed or decomposed into its elements before it can yield to the 

 body those forces which produce muscular strength. Now the fact 

 is, that when alcohol is taken into the body it leaves it again as 

 alcohol undecomposed, there being no change wrought upon it. It 

 therefore cannot have given up those elements that are needed in 

 order to supply nutriment and muscular force. As an evidence 

 that alcohol thus leaves the system undecomposed and without any 

 change, you have but to give an individual a few tablespoonfuls and 

 you can shortly afterwards smell its vapor as it is emitted from the 

 pores of the skin. You can, as easily and definitely, reproduce and 



