THE BORDERLAND OF CHEMISTRY AND ELECTRICITY. 
217 
even with pure spirit the essential oils used with the spirit have un¬ 
doubtedly driven people mad, and with methylated spirit there could 
be but one end, and that is absolute dementia. 
Then again, whisky sometimes consists of a mixture of the real spirit 
fusel-oil, and deodorized methylated spirit or crude German potato 
spirit. I need again hardly mention the terrible ravages that drink, 
impure and poisonous, is making amongst the inhabitants of this country. 
Unfortunately,I have a large personal experience as to its common abuse 
amongst those I have known in past years, and even at the present 
time. Dipsomania is on the increase, and it is to be hoped that the 
new law lately introduced will lead up to a still more stringent law, 
and that is, that those whose abuse of alcohol produces incipient mad¬ 
ness and an utter want of control of themselves as civilised beings 
shall be compelled on the certificates of medical men to enter homes 
where they would be taken care of as individuals suffering from mania. 
It is more than possible that impure spirit is the initial cause of 
sarcoma of the liver and most certainly kidney diseases. 
Everything iu the history of the evolution of the human race points 
to a better condition of life since science has been applied to the wants 
of man. Life has constant change or regeneration; two men who 
have not met for several years meet each other under the impression 
that they are individually the same. They are not; they have been 
entirely regenerated and renewed, I will speak in a very plain manner. 
They have absolutely been swallowing themselves, for if their saliva is 
examined microscopically you will find the dead cells of their bodies, 
which they are constantly swallowing and digesting. The constant 
washings of their bodies washes away the outside cells, and the very 
perspiration exudes the rejected cells from the living. Their very bones 
have been changed, for without this constant change and regeneration, 
renewal of matter and rejection of dead matter, life could not go on; 
and when the time comes in man's history when this regeneration and 
active change become slower and still slower, calcareous deposits take 
the place of the old cells, man becomes stiff in his joints, his muscles 
do not act, his nerves become coagulated, and regeneration for the 
time being ceases. Sleep or rest of the necessary actions for sustain¬ 
ing life takes place, and this is called death ; but as whatever we start 
with must go on, so it seems to me that if we start with life then we 
must end with life. Death is merely a form of regeneration of the 
portion of that great ( ether' which permeates space and all things, 
and may be called Eternal Life. 
Intimately related to this so-called f ether' (a very poor term) we 
have electricity. Visible electricity has of course long been known to 
man as lightning and the aurora borealis, but its experimental and arti¬ 
ficial production was in all probability first known to the Egyptian 
priests, who were the most scurvy set of fraudulent rascals that were 
ever evolutionised from the human race. But everything in science 
seems to have emanated from Egypt; this was possibly due to the 
many curious natural phenomena that exist in different parts of that 
country. 
