644 PRACTICE OF PHYSIC. 



to its powers, and where I have seen it employed, it showed 

 stimulant effects that were hurtful." 



CCXIX. Wine has the advantage of being grateful to the 

 palate and stomach, and of having its stimulant parts so much 

 diluted, that it can be conveniently given in small doses, so that 

 it may be employed with sufficient caution ; but it is of little 

 service unless taken pretty largely. 



" It is now generally agreed, that wherever a stimulus is 

 necessary, the most safe, and perhaps the most effectual, is wine; 

 with regard to this, however, the theory is not very clear. It 

 contains alcohol, which possesses a sedative, narcotic, and an an- 

 tispasmodic power, if you will, when used in a sufficient quantity, 

 to a considerable degree ; and whether its virtues are to be im- 

 puted to its sedative and antispasmodic, or to its stimulant 

 power, is not a matter that is very clearly determined. But 

 if it operates in the first way, it should not be a better remedy 

 than opium, and some people do say so, but I will not, nor do 

 I know of any practitioner who has learned to employ opium in 

 the same manner and with the same effects that we do wine. In 

 short, whatever are its other powers, in the way we employ it, 

 by small and separate exhibitions, it may be considered as only 

 acting as a stimulant. I take my system with regard to wine 

 from Sir John Pringle, and nobody has illustrated the use of it 

 more agreeably to my notions. He lays the foundation in this 

 manner : he observes, that a delirium will arise from two differ- 

 ent errors, the one from large and repeated venesection, and the 

 other from wine and other cordial medicines given in the begin- 

 ning of the disease. Now, this is the foundation which I also 

 would wish to lay. I have formerly pointed out these two cases 

 of delirium, and, I hope, fully enough explained them, the one 

 depending upon a state of debility, the other upon a state of in- 

 creased impetus, accompanied with the phlogistic diathesis ; and 

 this explanation is fundamentally connected with the whole doc- 

 trine of fevers. Now, in the first of these cases, where the debility 

 prevails, and even a considerable degree of delirium in conse- 

 quence of it, wine is certainly, as Sir John Pringle observes, a pro- 

 per remedy. I have had instances myself of wine given to a con- 

 siderable quantity removing a delirium entirely ; and I have had 

 other instances from other practitioners that were still more re- 



