624 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



embryoes of females, adapt themselves to the alcoholic excretions 

 of both parents, and hence organize with wide scrofulous dis- 

 charges of alcoholic substances, often ripening into the worst 

 diseases, both before and after birth. Of all persons living in 

 wedlock, about twice as many males as females abuse themselves 

 by using alcoholic or fermented liquors ; and whence it is found 

 that ab6ut two-thirds of the cases of barrenness, miscarriage and 

 diseases of pregnant females, are the spontaneous, morbid, inher- 

 ited, scrofulous results of the father's abuse of health by drunk- 

 enness, rather than the cultivation of poor health by the mother. 

 Indeed, all alcoholic, scrofulous diseases, whether inherited or 

 cultivated, are nature's best outlets of ventilating the violations 

 of cultivated or inherited poor health; and cannot be relieved by 

 any medicines while the invalid still continues to drink and cul- 

 tivate them. 



As to the utility of alcoholic solvents to prepare medicines, 

 the conclusion arrived at by the writer of this paper is, that alco- 

 hol is the most virulent poison in nature, and that all drugs and 

 medicines that can practically be mingled with it for beverages 

 or medicines, only dilute and weaken it. Still, it is admitted 

 that other poisons may mercifully kill one quicker than alcoholic 

 beverages, yet alcohol is usually the most cunningly malicious, 

 of all drugs or medicines. Different drugs mixed with alcohol 

 produce different effects, but none worse than alcohol. Further- 

 more, it is concluded that no medicine, characterized like alco- 

 hol by fermentation, evaporation, or dissolution, ever tends to 

 cure in any circumstances whatever ; but on the contrary, that 

 the divine principle of vitality is constituted to sustain, retain, 

 or maintain good health, intelligence and happiness of body and 

 mind, provided we allow ourselves normal habits and conditions 

 of animal life, and not only better without these medicines than 

 with them, but even often in spite of the daily use of very inju- 

 rious drugs and weakening habits. 



And finally, the use of one gill to-day of commercial proof alco- 

 holic liquors, whether drugged or not, usually wastes about ten 

 per cent, of the drinker's strength and activity for to-morrow, for 

 either doing or enjoying the duties and pleasures of life, so that 

 he becomes ten per cent., for every gill consumed to-day, less effi- 

 cient than he otherwise would have been to serve with his whole 

 strength, either himself or his employer, or God or the devil. 

 The other physiological and moral equivalent misdemeanors, 



