PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 623 



or is it only an irritant ? The result of this writer's experiences, 

 observations and inquiries, indicates that it is not a furnisher 

 nor producer of nervous stimulus, but that it is only an irritant, 

 arousing and consuming, in one portion of time, the vital and 

 voluntary energies of the system, that would have otherwise 

 lasted twice as long ; making one excessively active for a short 

 time, and then leaving him for a time very exhausted and ineffi- 

 cient, until recruited. The loss of practical efficiency on account 

 of every gill of common proof alcoholic liquor consumed by the 

 body in one day, by furious, wasteful, extra speed of vital and 

 voluntary action, instead of normal rate of living, is 10 per cent. 

 Second, What are the remedial effi3cts of alcohol ? Alcohol 

 consumed in the stomach, not having been chemically combined 

 nor analysed in the stomach nor in the circulation of the blood ; 

 therefore when it is filtered as a part of the saliva into the 

 mouth, it irritates and vilifies the nerves of taste, somewhat as 

 it makes the eyes smart, and hence makes the experimenter crave 

 abnormal food, or food in excessive quantities, or even eschew 

 the best normal substances. When it circulates into the stomach 

 the alcoholic gastric acid irritates the stomach to morbid crav- 

 ings and fatiguing dissolutions of food, instead of being con- 

 tented with normal moderate digestion. By the escape of 

 alcohol as a part of the excretions of the breath through the 

 lungs, the lungs are diverted from their normal aerialization of 

 the blood, to discharging morbid excretid in foetid breath, 

 coughed up phlegm and the scrofulous discharges of pulmonary 

 diseases ; which first cultivate and then blight the bacchinal 

 blossoms on the nose. Where the alcoholic excretions are too 

 abundantly escaping through the skin, there the skin is irritated 

 and corroded into salt rheum, erysipelas, and other scrofulous 

 outlets of the violations of health, as humors and boils. But 

 when the alcoholic potations come to be excreted from the blood 

 vessels into the adjacent nerves and the brain, then the nerves 

 and faculties commonly most and openest used, now first close 

 up by internal irritation and swelling, and then mental and ner- 

 vous activity goes on mainly in only the drinker's weakest and 

 least used faculties of mind and body, and without his ordinary 

 moral and physical energies and restraints ; and he cannot then 

 even successfully grow, rest nor repair his system while contain- 

 ing alcoholic substances. 



Moreover the incipient germs of males, and the forming 



