WHAT IS A STIMULANT ? 
85 
wine^ or a dose of sal-volatile. Often repeated excesses with 
tea produce a chronic dyspepsia^ which is the result of a real 
and very permanent paralysis of the nerves of the stomach, 
and a general muscular tremor which indicates that the motor 
nervous system has not escaped. An over-dose of coffee pro- 
duces nearly always a palpitation of the heart, which is due to 
partial palsy of its co-ordinating nerves ; and chronic, excess 
in the use of this beverage is apt to render this symptom an 
extremely frequent visitor, and to establish likewise a state of 
muscular tremor similar to that caused by habitual excess with 
tea or with tobacco. 
The reader who has followed me carefuUy must have 
acquired a very different view of the action of stimuli from 
the popular one referred to in the opening words of this paper. 
It follows from what I have said that common food, provided 
it be easily digestible, is the typical stimulant, and this is 
really the case. There is no such curer of pain, sleeplessness, 
delirium, convulsion, &c., as concentrated soup or meat-jelly ; 
that is to say, on the average, this remedy will succeed more 
frequently than opium, or wine, or ammonia, or chloroform, or 
any other stimulant — useful as these may be when, confined to 
their really medicinal doses. It is in proportion as the latter 
remedies produce effects like those of food that they are 
successful in achieving any of these objects ; and the supposed 
recoil,"’^ which we so constantly hear of as the necessary 
after-consequence of stimulation, is, in fact, a pure myth. The 
symptoms of depression which have given rise to this notion 
are only produced by the impregnation of the blood with an 
excessive dose; when this has occurred, the symptoms are 
thenceforth those of narcosis only. 
It is one of the laws of narcotic action that, in proportion 
to the frequency with which truly narcotic doses are repeated, 
a progressive increase in the quantity required to produce a 
given effect takes place. This is because the nervous system 
suffers a real physical lesion under the influence of each narcotic 
dose, and if time be not given before its repetition for nature 
to repair the mischief done, the evil crescit eundo. Less and 
less sensitive tissue remains to be acted on, and the blood 
must be more and more thoroughly poisoned to ensure the 
necessary contact of the poison with the nervous matter which 
is the seat of those processes which give rise to the sensual 
delights of the intemperate. To say this is at once to destroy 
the authority for the vulgar statement that the use of a daily 
stimulant involves a periodical increase of dose ; a statement 
to which the habits of the millions of temperate indulgers in 
stimulants have always given a practical contradiction, and 
which is shown by the above considerations not to possess 
even a theoretical basis. 
