No. 216.] 455 



citement — the stimulus of business with some, with others of society, 

 with some of hope and expectation, keep alive the energies. But 

 the farmer feeds his nervous and general strength on fresh air and 

 wholesome labor. Artificial stimulus is not required by hi-m, he 

 does not feel its want, and has comparatively little relish for it. But 

 the dwellers in the cellars, courts, and ill-ventilated garrets, depress- 

 ed and prostrated by the want of the stimulus given by nature, una- 

 ble to enjoy the feelings guarantied by an unfailing abundance of 

 oxygen, instinctively feel the want of a substitute j they find it in 

 alcohol. The allurements held out by those dens of destruction, 

 abounding on all sides, add temptation to instinct, and the child of 

 ignorance and misfortune terminates his senses, and often his life, 

 the victim of licentiousness and unnatural debauchery. 



First take the drunkard from the cellar, give him the stimulus of a 

 pure atmosphere, relieve the demands of nature in this particular, 

 and the work of rexbrmation is half done, and will then go on with 

 increased vigor; but as long [as he is deprived of the sustaining 

 power offered by nature, his artificial appetite will be less easily 

 appeased. 



The community is guilty of the double offence of cutting off from 

 the destitute part of its members a proper supply of air, in other 

 words, of exciting an appetite for a vile and destructive substitute, 

 and then of presenting to them at almost every corner, opportunities 

 for indulgence in the poison. 



Very few members of the medical profession ever find a seat in 

 the public council chamber. Legislative and executive bodies must, 

 therefore, be dependent, in their ignorance of the subject, upon the 

 knowledge and experience of the lay members of the profession, to 

 enable them to make the proper laws, and exercise the proper au- 

 thority for the protection of their constituents against the encroach- 

 ments of disease. Is it not then, clearly the duty of the appointing 

 powers, to fill the offices having the control and direction of sanita- 

 ry matters, with men of the largest experience and most cultivated 

 capacity in medical science, having regard 1o the important consid- 

 eration that a man may be a good prescribing physician, without the 

 kind of knowledge or the taste requisite for the due discharge of 

 public duties of this character. This is a peculiar branch of the 

 science, (though strictly medical,) and as distinct as the practice of 

 surgery. 



