W.Vj-v:;-.?;.'  :•'■■'•■


  '■jri.;T.i'':.-.•.•'.;
    i*.','--fj'."-;-'-r:




     Wt'Mii}:':- ■■•
     J»fTt }•,!. .1 :


     p;i;:;»  ;.f.i.V. ,
     |ith:-!f!t:i, :  ,
     I;. i •■::. <i i: r •   ; •
     [,''|}J!:tft|«?:;v,:
     1^:. r):.ifi t.i; • ■

     mm;
JMMii


tiMlm

;:;»»}■
lliiiLiiV;  K;.'-'

5�489852 
 

THE
ANATOMY
OP
DRUNKENNESS. 
\ 
THE
"  ANATOMY
DRUNKENNESS.
      ROBERT jflACNISH,

MEMBER OF THE FACULTY OF PHYSICIANS AND SUBGEONS OF
              GLASGOW.
      iFttst &merfcmt,

FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION* _^
^fiffiff
PHILADELPHIA:<X£/,v ^ _  &
 CAREY, LEA AND CAREY, CHESNUT-ST

BOLD IN NEW-YORK, BY G. AND C. CART ILL; IN BOSTON, BY
          MONROE AND FRANCIS.

              1828.
*H 
 
                 TO






             DELTA,






AUTHOR OF  "THE LEGEND OF GENEVIEVE,"












  WITH EVERT SENTIMENT OP ADMIRATION,





         BY ^5 SINCERE FRIEND,






                 ROBERT MACNISH. 
\ 
CONTENTS.
                  CHAPTER I.
                                            Page
Preliminary Observations,.....9
                  CHAPTER II.
Causes of Drunkenness,......22
                 CHAPTER HI.
Phenomena of Drunkenness,.....29
                 CHAPTER IV.
Drunkenness Modified by Temperament,     -    -  42
                  CHAPTER V.
Drunkenness Modified by the Inebriating Agent,   -  51
                 CHAPTER VI.
Differences in the Action of Opium and Alcohol,   -  83
                CHAPTER VH.
Physiology of Drunkenness,.....88
                CHAPTER VIH.
Method of Curing the Fit of Drunkenness,    -    -  97
                 CHAPTER IX.
Pathology of Drunkenness,    -    -    -    -    -  106 
vni
                  CHAPTER X.
                                               Page
Sleep of Drunkards,......^3
                  CHAPTER XL
Spontaneous Combustion of Drunkards,  -    -     - 140
                  CHAPTER XH.
Drunkenness Judicially Considered,     ... 149

                 CHAPTER  XIII.
Method of Curing the Habit of Drunkenness, -     - 153
                 CHAPTER  XIV.
Advice to Determined Drunkards,  -               169

                  CHAPTER XV.
Drunkenness in Nurses,......173
                  CHAPTER XVI.
                              M
Liquors not always Hurtful,.....179
                 CHAPTER  XVII.
Concluding Observations,.....180

                   APPENDIX.
No. I.—Excerpt from Paris's Pharmacologia,  -    - 185
No. II.—Mr. Brande's Tables,      ....  188
No. III.—Quotation from Montesquieu,   -    -    -  190
No. rv\—Adulteration of Wine,   ....  191 
m. JOHN  MILLER
     LAXCASTiSIi
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.
  Drunkenness is not, like some other vices,
peculiar to modern times.  It is handed down
to us from "hoar antiquity;" and, if the re-
cords of the antediluvian era were more com-
plete, we should probably find that it was not
unknown to the Father of the  human  race.
The  cases of Noah and  Lot,  recorded in the
sacred writings, are the earliest of which tradi-
tion  or history has left any record;  and both
occurred in the infancy of society.   Indeed,
wherever the grape nourished, inebriation pre-
vailed.   The formation of wine from this fruit,
was among the earliest discoveries of man, and
the bad consequences thence resulting,  seem
to haye been almost coeval with the discovery.
                    B 
10
Those regions whose ungenial latitudes indis-
posed  them to yield the vine, gave birth to
other products which served as substitutes; and
the inhabitants rivalled or surpassed those of
the south in all kinds of Bacchanalian  indul-
gence—the  pleasures of drinking constituting
one of the most fertile themes of their poetry,
in the same manner as, in other climates, they
gave inspiration to the souls of Anacreon and
Hafiz.
  Drunkenness has varied greatly at different
times and among different nations.  There can
be no doubt that it prevails more in a rude than
in a civilized state  of society.  This is so much
the case, that as men get more refined, the vice
will gradually be found to soften down,  and as-
sume a less revolting character.  Nor can there
be a doubt that it prevails to a much  greater
extent in northern than  in southern latitudes.
The  nature of the climate renders this inevita-
ble, and gives to the human frame its capabili-
ties of withstanding liquor: hence, a quantity
which scarcely ruffles  the  frozen  current of a
Norwegian's blood, would scatter madness and
fever into the brain of the Hindoo.  Even in
Europe, the inhabitants of the south are  far less
adapted  to  sustain  intoxicating agents  than
those of the north.   Much of this depends upon
the coldness of the climate, and much also upon
the peculiar physical and moral frame to which
that  coldness  gives  rise.  The  natives of the 
11
south are a lively, versatile people;  sanguine
in their  temperaments, and susceptible, to an
extraordinary degree, of  every  impression.
Their minds seem to inherit the brilliancy of
their  climate,  and  are  rich with  sparkling
thoughts and beautiful imagery.  The northern
nations are the reverse of all this.  With more
intensity of purpose, with greater depth of rea-
soning powers, and superior  solidity of judg-
ment, they are  in  a great measure destitute of
that sportive and creative brilliancy which
hangs like a rainbow over the spirits of  the
south, and clothes them in a perpetual sunshine
of delight.   The  one is chiefly  led by  the
heart, the other by the head.  The one pos-
sesses the beauty of a flower-garden, the other
the sternness of the rock, mixed with its severe
and naked hardihood.  Upon constitutions so
differently organized, it cannot  be  expected
that a given portion  of  stimulus will operate
with equal power.  The airy inflammable na-
ture of the first is easily roused to excitation,
and manifests feelings which the second does
not experience till he has partaken much more
largely of the stimulating cause.   On this ac-
count, the one may be inebriated, and the other
remain  comparatively sober  upon  a similar
quantity.   In speaking of this subject, it is al-
ways to be remembered that a person is not to
be considered a drunkard because he consumes
a certain portion of liquor; but because what 
12
he does consume produces certain effects upon
his system.  The Russian, therefore, may take
six  glasses a-day, and be as temperate as the
Italian who takes four, or the Indian who takes
two.  But even when  this is acceded  to, the
balance  of sobriety will be found in favour of
the south: the inhabitants there not only drink
less, but are, bona fide, more seldom intoxicat-
ed than  the others.  Those who have contrast-
ed London and Paris, may easily verify this
fact; and those who have done the same to the
cities  of Moscow and  Rome,  can bear still
stronger testimony.  Who ever  heard of  an
Englishman sipping eau siicrfe,  and  treating
his friends to a  glass of lemonade ?  Yet such
things are common in France;  and, of all the
practices of that country, they are those  most
thoroughly visited by the contemptuous mali-
sons of  John Bull.
  It is a common belief that wine was the only
inebriating liquor known to antiquity,  but this
is a mistake.  Tacitus mentions the use of ale
or beer  as common  among the Germans of his
time.  By the Egyptians, likewise, whose coun-
try  was ill adapted to the cultivation of the
grape, it was employed as a substitute for wine.
Ale was common in the middle  ages, and Mr.
Park  states  that very good beer  is made, by
the usual process of brewing and malting, in the
interior of Africa.   The favourite  drink of our
Saxon ancestors was ale or mead.  Those wor- 
13
shippers of Odin were so notoriously addicted
to drunkenness, that it was regarded as honour-
able rather than otherwise; and the man who
could withstand the greatest quantity was look-
ed upon with  admiration and respect: whence
the drunken songs of the  Scandinavian scalds:
whence the glories of Valhalla, the fancied hap-
piness of  whose inhabitants consisted in quaff-
ing draughts from the skulls of their enemies
slain  in battle.  Even ardent spirit, which is
generally  supposed to be a modern  discovery,
probably existed from a very early period.   It
is said to have been first made by the Arabians
in the middle ages, and in all likelihood may
lay claim to a still remoter origin.   The spirit-
uous liquor called arrack has been manufactured
in the island of Java, as  well as in the con-
tinent of  Hindostan, from time immemorial.
Brandy was made in Sicily at the commence-
ment of the fourteenth century.  As to wine,
it was so common in  ancient times as to have a
tutelar god appropriated to it:  Bacchus and his
companion Silenus are as household words  in
the mouths of all, and constituted most import-
ant features of the heathen mythology.   We
have all heard of the  Falernian and Campanian
wines, and of the wines of Cyprus and Shiraz.
Indeed, there  is reason to believe that the  an-
cients were in  no respect inferior to the  mo-
derns in the excellence of their vinous liquors,
whatever  they may have been in the variety.
                     b2 
14
Wine was so common in the eastern nations,
that Mahomet  foreseeing the baleful  effects of
its propagation, forbade it to his followers, who,
to  compensate themselves,  had  recourse to
opium.   The  Gothic, or dark  ages,  seem to
have been those in which it was least common:
in proof of this it may  be  mentioned, that so
late as 1298, it was vended as a cordial by the
English apothecaries.  At the present day it is
little  drunk,  except by the upper classes, in
those countries which do not naturally furnish
the grape.  In those that do, it is so cheap as
to come within the reach of even the lowest.*
  In speaking of  drunkenness, it is impossible
not to be struck with the  physical and moral
degradation which it has spread over the world.
Wherever intoxicating liquors become general,
morality has been found  on the decline.  They
seem to act like the simoom of the desert, and
scatter destruction and misery around theirpath.
The ruin of Rome  was owing to luxury, of
which indulgence in wine was the principal in-
gredient.  Hannibal's  army fell,  less by the
arms of Scipio, than by the wines of Capua;
and the inebriated hero of Macedon, after slay-
ing his friend Cly tus, and burning the palace of
Persepolis, expired at last of a  fit of intoxica-

•  * T^ 1uantlty of wine raised in France alone, is almost
incredible. The vineyards in that country are said to occupy
hve millions of acres,  or a twenty-sixth part of the whole
territory. 
15
tion, in his thirty-third year.* Let us look back
to Belshazzar's Feast, where, under the phren-
zied excitation of  wine,  insult  and dishonour
were flung at  the throne  of the Most High.
Let us look at the dreadful  handwriting which
flashed astonishment and  dismay on the hearts
of these frantic Bacchanals, and, like the sound
of the last trumpet, pronounced their doom.  A
volume might be written in illustration of the
evil effects of  dissipation;  but this  is unneces-
sary to those who look carefully around them,
and more especially  to those who  are  conver-
sant with the history of mankind. At the same
time, when we speak of drunkenness as occur-


  * " Alexander was for ever solemnizing  new festivals,
and perpetually at new banquets, in which he quaffed with
his usual intemperance.  After having spent a whole night
in carousing, a second was proposed to him.  He met ac-
cordingly, and there were twenty guests at table. He drank
to the health of every  person in the company, and then
pledged them severally.   After this, calling for Hercules's
cup, which held six bottles, it was filled, when he poured
it all  down, drinking to a Macedonian  of  the company,
Proteas by name, and afterwards pledged him again in  the
same furious bumper. He had no sooner  swallowed it than
he fell upon the floor."—" In this condition he was seized
with a violent fever, and carried  half-dead  to his palace.
The fever continued, though with some good intervals, in
which he gave the necessary orders for the sailing of the
fleet, and the marching of his land-forces, being persuaded
he should soon recover.  But at last, finding himself past
all hopes, and his voice beginning to fail, he drew his ring
from his finger, and gave it to Perdiccas, with orders to
convey his corpse to the temple of Ammon."—Rollin. 
16
ring in antiquity, it is  proper to remark, that
there were certain  countries in which it was
viewed in a much more dishonourable light than
by any modern nation.   The Nervii refused to
drink wine, alleging that it made them coward-
ly and effeminate: these simple people had no
idea of what  by our seamen  is called Dutch
courage; they did not feel the necessity of ele-
vating their native valour by any artificial ex-
citement.   The  ancient Spartans held ebriety
in such abhorrence, that, with a view to inspire
the rising generation with  a  due contempt of
the vice, it was customary to intoxicate the
slaves, and exhibit them publicly in this degrad-
ed condition.   By the Indians, drunkenness is
looked upon as a species of insanity; and in
their language, the  word ramgam, signifying
a drunkard, signifies also a madman.  Both the
ancients and moderns could jest as well as mo-
ralise upon this subject.   " There hangs a bot-
tle of wine," was the derisive exclamation of
the Roman soldiery, as  they pointed  to the
body of the drunken Bonosus, who, in a fit of
despair, suspended  himself upon a  tree.  " If
you wish to have a shoe of durable materials,"
exclaims the  facetious  Matthew  Langsberg,
"you should  make the  upper leather  of the
mouth of a hard drinker,—for that never lets
in water."
  If we turn from antiquity to our own times,
we shall  find   little  cause to  congratulate our- 
17
selves upon  any improvement.   The vice has
certainly diminished among the higher orders
of society, but there is every reason to fear that,
of late, it has made  fearful strides  among the
lower.   Thirty or forty years  ago, a landlord
did not conceive that he had done justice to his
guests unless he sent them from  his table in a
state of  intoxication.   This practice still pre-
vails pretty  generally  in Ireland and  in the
Highlands of Scotland, but in other parts of the
kingdom it is fast  giving  way: and  it is to be
hoped that the day  is  not far distant when great-
er temperance will extend to these jovial dis-
tricts, and render their hospitality a little more
consonant with prudence and moderation.  The
increase of drunkenness among the lower class-
es may be imputed  to various causes, and chiefly
to the late  abandonment of part of the duty
on rum  and whiskey.  This was done with the
double  motive of benefiting  agriculture and
commerce, and of driving the  "giant smug-
gler" from the  field.   The  latter object it has
in a great measure  failed of effecting.  The
smuggler still plies his trade to a considerable
extent, and brings his commodity to the market
with nearly  the same  certainty of acquiring
profit as ever.   It would be well if the liquor,
vended  to the poor,  possessed  the qualities of
that  furnished by the  contraband dealer; but,
instead of this, it is usually a vile compound of
every thing spurious and pestilent, and seems 
18
 expressly contrived for the purpose of preying
 upon the vitals of the unfortunate victims who
 partake of it.  The extent to which adultera-
 tion has been carried, in all kinds of liquor, is
 indeed such as to interest every class of society.
 Wine, for instance,  is often impregnated with
 alum and sugar of lead, the latter dangerous in-
 gredient being resorted  to by inn-keepers and
 others, to take away the sour taste so common
 in bad wines.  Even the colour of these liquids is
 frequently artificial; and  the deep rich complex-
 ion so greatly  admired by persons not in the
 secrets of the trade,  is often caused, or at least
 heightened, by factitious additions, such as el-
 der berries, bilberries, red-woods, &c.  Alum
 and sugar of lead are also common in spirituous
 liquors;  and in many  cases oil of  vitriol, tur-
 pentine, and  other  materials  equally abomi-
 nable, are  to be  found  in combination with
 them:   That  detestable  liquor called  British
 gin,  is  literally compounded of these  ingre-
 dients: nor are all malt liquors, with their multi-
farious narcotic additions, less thoroughly so-
 phisticated or  less detrimental  to  the health.
From  these  circumstances, two  conclusions
must naturally be  drawn;  viz. that inebriating
agents often contain elements of disease foreiga
to themselves;  and that all  persons purchasing
them should endeavour to ascertain the state of
their purity, and  employ no dealer whose ho.
nour and honesty are  not known to be unim- 
19
peachable.   Liquors, even in their purest state,
are too often injurious to the constitution with-
out the admixture of poisons.*
  The varieties of  wine are so numerous as
almost to defy calculation. Mr. Brande, in his
table,! gives a list of no less than forty-four dif-
ferent kinds; and there are others which he has
not enumerated.  Ardent spirits are fewer in
number, and may be mostly comprised under
the heads of rum,  gin,  brandy, and whiskey.
The first is the prevailing drink over the West
Indies,  North  America, J and such cities of
Great Britain as are intimately connected with
these regions by commerce. The second is ex-
tensively used in Holland and Switzerland, the
countries which principally furnish it, and has
found its way pretty generally over the whole
of Europe.  The third is chiefly produced in
Charente and   Languedoc,  and  is  the spirit
most  commonly found  in the  south.    The
fourth is confined, in a great measure, to Ireland
and Scotland, in which latter  country the  best
has always been made. Of malt liquors we have
many varieties.  Britain, especially England,
is the country which furnishes them in greatest

  * See Accum's Treatise on  the Adulteration of Food;
Child on Brewing Porter; and Shannon on Brewing and
Distillation.
  \ See Appendix.
  * Whiskey is the liquor most extensively used in North
America. 
20
 perfection.   They  are  the natural drinks of
 Englishmen—the vinum Anglicorum, as fo-
 reigners have often remarked.   Every town of
 any consequence in  the empire has its brewery;
 and in almost every one  is  there some dif-
 ference in the quality  of the  liquor.   Brown
 stout,  London  and  Scotch  porters;  Burton,
 Dorchester, Edinburgh, and Alloa ales, are only
 a few of the endless varieties  of these widely
 circulated fluids.
  Besides wines, ardent spirits,  and  malt li-
 quors, there are many  other agents possessing
 inebriating properties.  Among others, the Pe-
ganum Harmala, or Syrian rue, so often used
 by the sultan Solyman; the Hibiscus  Salda-
 rissa,  which furnishes the Indian bangue, and
 from which  the  Nepenthes of the ancients is
 supposed to have been made; the  Balsac, or
 Turkish bangue, found  on the shores  of the
 Levant;  the  Penang, or  Indian  betle;  the
 Hyoscyamus Niger; and the Atropa Bella-
 donna.* In addition to these,  and many more,
 there are  opium, tobacco, Cocculus Indicus,\ \

  *  " The Scots mixed a quantity  of the juice of the bella-
 donna (solarium somniferum) with the bread and drink
 which, by  their truce, they were to supply the Danes
 with, which so intoxicated them that  the Scots killed the
greater part of Sweno's  army."—Buchanan's History of
 Scotland.                                   J
  t  Cocculus Indicus is sometimes thrown into ponds for
the purpose of intoxicating the fishes, that they may be
 more easily caught. 
21
and the  innumerable  tribes of liqueurs and
ethers, together with other agents of a less po-
tent nature, such as clary, darnel, and saffron.
The variety of agents capable of excitingdrunk-
enness is indeed surprising, and in proportion
to their number seems  the prevalence of that
fatal vice to which an improper use of them
gives rise.
c 
CHAPTER II.
CAUSES OF DRUNKENNESS.
  The causes of drunkenness are so obvious,
that few authors  have thought it necessary to
point them  out: we shall  merely say a few
words upon the subject.   There are some per-
sons  who will never be  drunkards, and others
who  will be  so in spite of all  that can be done
to prevent  them.  Some are drunkards  by
choice, and  others by necessity.  The former
have an innate and constitutional fondness for
liquor, and drink con amore.  Such men are
usually of a sanguineous temperament, of coarse
unintellectual minds, and of  low and animal
propensities.  They have, in general, a certain
rigidity of fibre, and a flow of animal  spirits
which other people are without.   They delight 
23
in the roar and riot of drinking clubs; and with
them, in particular, all the miseries of life may
be referred to the bottle.
  The drunkard by necessity was njever meant
by nature to be dissipated.   He is perhaps a
person of amiable dispositions, whom misfor-
tune has overtaken, and who, instead of bear-
ing up manfully against it, endeavours to drown
his sorrows in liquor.  It is an excess of sensi-
bility, a  partial mental weakness, an  absolute
misery of  the heart,  which  drives  him on.
Drunkenness, with him, is  a consequence  of
misfortune; it is a solitary dissipation preying
upon him in silence.  Such a man frequently
dies broken-hearted, even before his  excesses
have had time to destroy him by their own un-
assisted agency.
  Some  become drunkards  from excess of in-
dulgence in  youth.   There are parents who
have a common custom of treating their chil-
dren to wine, punch, and  other  intoxicating
liquors.  This, in reality, is  regularly bringing
them up  in an apprenticeship to drunkenness.
Others are taught the vice by frequenting drink-
ing clubs and masonic lodges.   These are the
genuine academies of tippling.   Two-thirds of
the drunkards we  meet with, have been there
initiated  in that love of intemperance and bois-
terous irregularity which distinguish  their fu-
ture  lives.   Men  who are good singers are
very apt to become drunkards,  and, in truth, 
24
most of them are so, more or less, especially
if they have naturally much joviality or warmth
of temperament.  A fine voice to such men is
a fatal accomplishment.
  Ebriety prevails  to  an  alarming  degree
among the lower orders of society.  It exists
more in towns than in the country, and more
among mechanics than  husbandmen.  Most of
the misery to be observed  among  the working
classes, spring from this source.   No persons
are more addicted to the  habit, and  all its at-
tendant vices, than  the pampered servants of
the great.   Inn-keepers, musicians, actors, and
men who lead a rambling and eccentric life, are
exposed to a similar hazard.   Husbands some-
times teach their wives to  be  drunkards by in-
dulging them in toddy, and such  fluids, every
time they themselves  sit down to their liba-
tions.
  Women frequently  acquire the  vice  by
drinking porter and ale while nursing.  These
stimulants are usually  recommended to them
from well-meant but mistaken  motives, by their
female attendants.  Many fine young women
are ruined by this pernicious  practice.   Their
persons become gross, their milk unhealthy, and
a foundation is too  often laid for  future indul-
gence in liquor.
  The frequent use  of cordials, such as noyau,
shrub,  kirsch-wasser,  curacoa, and anissette,
sometimes leads to  the practice.   The active 
                     25

principle of these liqueurs is neither more nor
less than ardent spirits.*
   Among other causes, may be mentioned the
excessive use  of  spirituous tinctures for the
cure of hypochondria and indigestion.  Persons
who use strong tea,  especially green, run the
same risk.   The  latter species  is  singularly
hurtful to the constitution, producing hysteria,
heartburn,  and  general debility of the chylo-
poietic viscera.   Some of these bad effects are
relieved for a time by the  use of spirits;  and
what was at first employed as a medicine, soon
becomes  an essential requisite.
   Some writers allege, that unmarried women,
especially if somewhat advanced  in life,  are
more given to  liquor than those who are mar-
ried.   This point  I am unable from my own
observation to  decide.  Women  who indulge
in this way, are solitary dram-drinkers,  and
so would men  be, had not the arbitrary opi-
nions of the world  invested the practice in them
with much less  moral turpitude than in the op-
posite sex.   Of the two sexes, there can  be no
doubt that men  are much the more addicted to
all sorts of intemperance.
  Drunkenness appears to be in some measure
hereditary.  We frequently see it descending
from parents to their children.  This may un-

  • Liqueurs often contain narcotic principles; therefore
their use is doubly improper.
                     C2 
26
    doubtedly often  arise from bad  example  and
    imitation, but there can be little question that,
    in many instances at least, it exists as a family
    predisposition.
      Men of genius are often  unfortunately ad-
r  dieted to drinking.  Nature, as she has gifted
    them with greater powers than  their fellows,
    seems also to have  mingled with their cup of
    life  more bitterness.  There  is a melancholy
    which is apt to come like a cloud over the ima-
    ginations  of such characters.  Their minds pos-
    sess a susceptibility  and a delicacy of structure
    which unfit them  for the gross atmosphere of
    human nature; wherefore, high talent has ever
    been  distinguished  for   sadness  and  gloom.
    Genius lives  in a world  of its own: it is the
    essence of a superior nature—the loftier ima-
    ginings of the mind, clothed with a more  spi-
    ritual and refined verdure. Few men endowed
    with such faculties  enjoy the  ordinary happi-
    ness of humanity.   The  stream of their lives
    runs harsh and broken.   Melancholy thoughts
    sweep perpetually across their souls ; and  if
    these  be  heightened by  misfortune, they are
    plunged into the deepest  misery.
      To relieve these  feelings, many plans have
    been adopted.   Dr.  Johnson fled  for years to
    wine under his habitual gloom.  He found  that
    the pangs were removed while its  immediate
    influence lasted, but he also found that they re-
    turned with double force when that influence 
27
passed away.  He saw the dangerous precipice
on which he stood, and, by an unusual effort of
volition, gave it over.  In its stead he substi-
tuted tea;  and to this  milder stimulus  had re-
course in his melancholy.  Voltaire  and Fonte-
nelle, for the same purpose, used coffee.   The
excitements of Newton and Hobbes were the
fumes of tobacco, while Demosthenes and Hal-
ler were sufficiently  stimulated  by drinking
freely of cold water.  Such are the  differences^
of constitution.
  *'As good be melancholy  still, as drunken
beasts and beggars."   So says old  Burton,  in
his Anatomy of Melancholy, and there are few
who will not subscribe to his creed.  The same
author quaintly, but  justly, remarks, " if a
drunken man gets a child, it will never, likely,
have a good brain."   Dr. Darwin, a great au-
thority on all subjects connected with life,  says,
that he never knew a  glutton affected with the
gout, who was not at the same time addicted  to
liquor.  He also observes, "it is remarkable
that all  the diseases  from drinking spirituous
or fermented liquors  are liable to become he-
reditary, even to the third generation, gradually
increasing,  if the cause be continued,  till the
family becomes extinct."*
  We need  not endeavour to trace  farther the
remote causes of drunkenness.  A drunkard is
* Botanic Garden. 
28
rarely able to recall the particular circumstances
which made him so.  The vice creeps upon him
insensibly, and he is involved in its fetters be-
fore he is aware.  It is enough  that we know
the proximate cause, and also the certain con-
sequences.  One  thing  is certain, that a man
who addicts himself to intemperance, can never
be said* to be sound in mind or body.   The
former is in a state of partial insanity,  while
the effects of the liquor remain;  and the latter
is always more or less diseased in its actions. 
CHAPTER III.
PHENOMENA OP DRUNKENNESS.
  The consequences of drunkenness are dread-
ful, but the pleasures of getting drunk are cer-
tainly ecstatic. While the illusion lasts, happi-
ness is complete; care  and melancholy are
thrown to the wind, and Elysium with all its
glories, descends upon the dazzled imagination
of the drinker.
  Some authors have spoken of the pleasure of
being completely drunk: this, however, is not
the most exquisite period. The time is when a
person is  neither "drunk nor sober, but neigh-
bour to both," as Bishop Andrews says in his
"Ex—ale—tation of Ale."   The moment is
when the ethereal emanations begin to float
around the brain—when the soul is commenc- 
30
 ing to expand its wings and  rise from earth—
 when the tongue feels itself somewhat loosened
 in the mouth, and breaks the previous tacitur-
 nity, if any such existed.
   What are the sensations of incipient drunk-
 enness? First, an unusual serenity prevails over
 the mind,  and the soul of the votary is filled
 with  a placid satisfaction.   By degrees he is
 sensible of a soft and not unmusical humming
 in his ear,  at every pause of the conversation.
 He seems,  to  himself, to wear his head lighter
 than usual  upon his shoulders.  Then a species
 of obscurity, thinner than the finest mist, passes
 before his  eyes,  and makes  him see objects
 rather indistinctly. The lights begin to dance
 and appear double.  A  gaiety and warmth are
 felt at the same time about the heart. The ima-
 gination is  expanded, and filled with a thousand
 delightful  images.  He  becomes loquacious,
 and pours  forth, in enthusiastic  language, the
 thoughts which  are  born, as it  were, within
him.
  Now comes a spirit of universal contentment
with himself and all the world.  He thinks no
more  of misery: it is dissolved in the bliss of
the moment.   This is the acme of the fit—the
ecstacy is now perfect.  As yet the sensorium
is in tolerable order:  it is only shaken, but the
capability of thinking with  accuracy still  re-
mains.  About this time,  the drunkard pours
out all the secrets of his soul.  His qualities, 
31
good or bad, come forth without  reserve; and
now, if at any time, the human heart may be
seen into.  In a short period, he is seized with
a most inordinate propensity to talk nonsense,
though he is perfectly conscious of doing  so.
He also commits many foolish things, knowing
them to be foolish. The power of volition, that
faculty which keeps the will subordinate to the
judgment, seems totally weakened.  The  most
delightful time seems to be that immediately
before  becoming very talkative.  When  this
takes place, a  man  turns ridiculous, and  his
mirth, though more boisterous, is not so exqui-
site. At first the intoxication partakes of sen-
timent, but, latterly,  it  becomes merely ani-
mal.
  After this the scene thickens.  The drunk-
ard's imagination gets  disordered  with the
most grotesque conceptions. Instead of mode-
rating his drink, he pours it down more rapidly
than ever:  glass follows glass with  reckless
energy.  His head  becomes perfectly giddy.
The candles burn blue, or  green, or yellow;
and where there are perhaps only three on the
table, he  sees a dozen.  According to  his tem-
perament, he is amorous, or musical, or quar-
relsome.   Many possess  a most extraordinary
wit; and a great flow of spirits is a general at-
tendant.   In the latter stages, the speech  is
thick, and the use of the tongue in a great mea-
sure lost.   His mouth is half open, and idiotic 
                     32

in the expression; while his eyes are glazed,
wavering, and watery.  He is apt to fancy that
he has offended some one of the company, and
is ridiculously profuse with his apologies. Fre-
quently he mistakes  one  person for  another,
and imagines that some of those before him are
individuals who are, in reality,  absent, or even
dead.  The muscular powers  are, all  along,
much affected:  this indeed happens before any
great change takes place in the  mind,  and goes
on progressively increasing.   He can no longer
walk with  steadiness, but  totters from  side to
side.  The  limbs become powerless, and inade-
quate to sustain his weight.  He is, however,
not always sensible of any deficiency in this re-
spect: and, while exciting mirth by his eccen-
tric  motions, imagines that he  walks with the
most perfect steadiness.  In attempting to run,
he  conceives that he passes  over' the ground
with  astonishing  rapidity.   The last stage of
drunkenness  is total  insensibility.  The  man
tumbles perhaps  beneath the table, and is car-
ried away in a state of stupor to his couch.   In
this condition he  is said to be dead drunk.
  When the drunkard is put to  bed, let us sup-
pose that his faculties are  not totally  absorbed
in  apoplectic  stupor; let  us suppose that  he
still possesses consciousness and  feeling, though
these are both disordered; then begins  "the tug
of war;" then comes the misery which is doom-
ed to succeed his previous raptures.  No sooner 
33
  is his head laid upon the pillow than it is seized
  with the strangest throbbing.  His heart beats
  quick and hard  against the  ribs.   A noise like
  the distant fall of a  cascade, or rushing of a ri-
  ver, is heard in his ears: sough—sough—sough,
  goes  the sound.   His senses now become more
  drowned and stupified.  A  dim recollection of
  his  carousals, like  a  shadowy and  indistinct
  dream,  passes before the mind.  He still hears,
  as in echo, the cries  and laughter of his compa-
  nions.  Wild fantastic fancies accumulate thick-
  ly around the brain.  His  giddiness  is greater
  than ever; and  he feels as if in a ship tossed
  upon a heaving  sea.   At last he  drops insensi-
  bly into a profound  slumber.
    In the morning he awakes in a high fever.
  The whole  body is  parched; the palms of the
  hands, in particular, are like leather.  His head
  is often violently painful.  He feels  excessive
  thirst; while his tongue is white, dry, and stiff.
t  The  whole inside of the mouth is likewise hot
  and constricted, and  the throat often sore. Then
\ look at his eyes—how sickly, dull, and languid!
  The  fire, which first lighted them up the even-
  ing  before, is all gone.   A stupor, like that of
  the last stage of drunkenness, still clings about
  them, and they  are disagreeably affected by the
  light.  The  complexion sustains as great a
  change: it is no longer flushed with gaiety and
  excitation, but pale  and wayworn, indicating a
  profound mental and bodily exhaustion. There
                      D 
34
  is probably sickness, and the appetite is totally
  gone.  Even yet the delirium of intoxication
  has not left him, for his head still rings, his
  heart still throbs violently; and if he  attempt
  getting up, he stumbles with  giddiness.   The
  mind also i3 sadly depressed,  and the proceed-
  ings of the previous night are  painfully  remem-
  bered. He  is sorry for his conduct, promises
  solemnly never again so to commit himself, and
  calls impatiently for something to quench his
  thirst. Such are the usual phenomena of a fit
  of drunkenness.
    In the  beginning of intoxication we  are in-
  clined to  sleep, especially if we indulge alone.
  In companies, the noise and opportunity of con-
  versing prevent this; and when a certain quan-
  tity has been drunk, the drowsy tendency wears
  away.  A person who wishes to stand out well,
  should never talk much.  This increases the ef-
* fects of the liquor, and hurries on intoxication.
  Hence, every experienced drunkard holds it to
  be a piece of prudence to keep his tongue under
  restraint.
    The giddiness of intoxication is always great-
  er in darkness than in the light.  I know of no
  rational way in which this can be  explained;
  but,  certain  it is, the drunkard never  so well
  knows his true condition as when alone and in
  darkness.   Possibly the  noise and light dis-
  tracted the mind, and  made the bodily sensa-
  tions be, for the time, in  some measure unfelt. 
35
  There are some persons who get sick from
drinking even a small quantity; and this sick-
ness is, upon the whole, a  favourable circum-
stance, as it proves an effectual curb upon them,
however much they might be disposed to in-
temperance.
  Intoxication, before it proceeds too far, has a
powerful  tendency to increase  the appetite.
Perhaps it would  be more correct to say, that
inebriating liquors, by stimulating the stomach,
have this power.   We often see gluttony and
drunkenness  combined together at the same
time.  This continues till the last stage, when,
from overloading, and excess of  irritation, the
stomach expels its contents by vomiting.
  All along, the action of the kidneys is much
increased, especially at the commencement of
intoxication.
  When a large quantity of intoxicating fluid
has been suddenly taken  into the  stomach, the
usual preliminary symptoms of drunkenness do
not appear.  An instantaneous stupefaction en-
sues; and the person is at once knocked down.
This cannot be imputed to distention of the ce-
rebral vessels, but to a sudden operation on the
nervous branches of the  stomach.   The brain
is thrown into a state of collapse, and  many of
its functions suspended.  In such  cases, the face
is not, at first, tumid  and ruddy, but  pale and
contracted.  The  pulse is likewise feeble, and
the body cold and powerless. When re-action 
36
takes place, these symptoms wear off, and those
of sanguineous apoplexy succeed; such as turgid
countenance, full  but slow pulse, and  strong
stertorous breathing.  The vessels of the brain
have now become filled, and there is a strong
determination to that organ.
  Persons of tender  or  compassionate minds
are particularly subject, during intoxication, to
be affected to tears at the sight of any distress-
ing object, or even on hearing an affecting tale.
Drunkenness, in such characters, may be said to
melt the heart, and open up the  fountains of
sorrow.  Their sympathy is  often ridiculous,
and aroused by the most trifling causes.  Those
who have a lively imagination, combined with
this tenderness of heart, sometimes conceive
fictitious cases of distress, and weep bitterly at
the wo of their own creating.
  During a paroxysm of drunkenness, the body
is much less sensible to external stimuli than at
other times: it is  particularly capable of resist-
ing cold.  Seamen, when absent on shore,  are
prone to get  intoxicated; and they will  fre-
quently lie for hours on the highway,  even in
the depth of  winter, without any bad conse-
quences.  A  drunk man seldom  shivers from
cold.   His frame seems steeled against it, and
he holds out with an apathy which is astonish-
ing. The body is, in like manner, insensible
to injuries, such as cuts,  bruises,  &c.   He fre-
quently receives,  in fighting, the  most severe 
37
 blows, without seemingly feeling  them, and
 without, in fact, being aware of the matter till
 sobered.  Persons  in  intoxication  have been
 known to chop off their fingers, and otherwise
 disfigure themselves, laughing all the while at
 the action.  But when the paroxysm is off, and
 the frame weakened, things are changed.  Ex-
 ternal agents are then withstood with  little vi-
 gour, with even less than in the natural state of
 the body.  The person shivers on the slightest
 chill, and is more than usually subject to fevers
 and all sorts of contagion.
  External  stimuli  frequently break  the  fit.
 Men have been instantly sobered by having a
 bucket of cold water thrown upon them, or by
 falling into a stream.  Strong emotions of the
 mind produce the same effect, such as a sense
 of danger, or a piece of good or bad news, sud-
 denly communicated.
  There are  particular situations and circum-
 stances in which a man can stand liquor better
 than in others.  In  the close atmosphere of a
 large town, he  is soon overpowered;  and it is
 here that the genuine drunkard is to be met
 with in the greatest perfection. In the country,
 especially in a mountainous district, or on the
sea-shore, where the air is cold and piercing, a
 great quantity may be taken with  impunity.
TheHighlanders drink largely of ardent spirits,
and they are often intoxicated, yet, among them,
 there are comparatively few who can be called
                    d2 
38
habitual drunkards.  A keen air seems to dead-
en its effects, and it soon evaporates from their
constitutions. Sailors and soldiers who are hard
wrought,  also  consume  enormous quantities
without injury: porters and all sorts of labour-
ers do the same.  With these men exercise is a
corrective; but in towns, where no counteract-
ing agency is employed, it acts with irresistible
power upon the frame, and soon proves destruc-
tive.
  A great quantity of liquors may also  be taken
without inebriating, in certain diseases, such as
spasm, tetanus, gangrene, and retrocedent gout.
  Vertigo, from  ordinary causes, has  a strong
tendency to produce sickness, but that from
drunkenness does  not seem to have this effect,
at least  not to  any considerable  degree. The
nausea and sickness sometimes occurring  in
intoxication, proceed almost entirely from the
surcharged and  disordered state of the stomach,
and very little, if at all, from the accompanying
giddiness.
  All kinds of  intoxicating agents act much
more rapidly and  powerfully upon an  empty
than upon a full stomach.
  The stomach  may get accustomed to a strong
stimulus,  and resist it powerfully, while  it
yields to  one much weaker.  I have known
people who could  drink eight or ten glasses of
raw spirits at a sitting  without feeling them
much, become perfectly intoxicated by half the 
39
quantity made into toddy.  In like manner, he
who is in the constant habit of using one spirit
—rum, for instance—cannot, for the most part,
indulge to an equal extent in another, without
experiencing more severe effects than if he had
partaken of  his usual beverage.  This happens
even when the strength of the two liquors is the
same.
  The mind exercises a considerable effect upon
drunkenness, and may often control it power-
fully.  When in  the  company of a superior
whom we respect, or of a female in whose pre-
sence it would be indelicate to get intoxicated,
a much greater portion of  liquor may be with-
stood than in societies where no such restraints
operate.
  Some drunkards retain their senses after the
physical powers are quite  exhausted.  Others,
even when the mind is wrought to a pitch lead-
ing to the  most absurd actions, preserve a de-
gree of cunning and observation which enables
them to elude the tricks  which their compa-
nions are preparing to play upon them. In such
cases, they display great address, and take the
first opportunity of retaliating; or, if such does
not occur, of slipping out of the room  unob-
served and  getting away.  Some,  while the
whole mind seems locked up in the stupor of
forgetfulness, hear all that  is going on. No one
should ever  presume on the intoxicated state of
another to talk of him detractingly in his pre- 
40
sence. While apparently deprived of all sensa-
tion, he may be an attentive listener; and what-
ever is said, though  unheeded at the momer.t,
is not forgotten afterwards, but treasured care-
fully up in the memory.  Much discord and ill-
will frequently arise  from such imprudence.
  There are persons who are exceedingly pro-
fuse,  and fond of giving away their money,
watches, rings, &c. to the company.  This pe-i
culiarity will never, I believe, be  found  in a
miser: avarice is a passion  strong under every
circumstance. Drinking  does  not loosen  the
grasp of the  covetous man, or open his heart..
He  is for ever the same.
  The generality of people are apt to talk of
their  private affairs  when  intoxicated.  They
then reveal the most deeply hidden secrets to
their companions. Others have their minds so
happily constituted that nothing escapes them.
They are, even in their most unguarded mo-
ments, secret and close as the grave.
  The natural disposition may be better disco-
vered in drunkenness than at any other time.*
In modern society, life is all a disguise. Every
man walks in masquerade, and  his most  inti-
mate friend very  often does not know his real
character.  Many wear smiles constantly upon
their cheeks, whose hearts are unprincipled and
treacherous.  Many with violent tempers have
* "In vino Veritas." 
41
all the external calm and softness of charity it-
self.  Some speak always with sympathy, who,
at soul, are full of gall and bitterness. Intoxica-
tion tears off the veil, and sets each  in his true
light, whatever that may be.  The  combative
man will quarrel, the sensualist will love, the
detractor will abuse his neighbour.  I have
known exceptions,  but  they are few in num-
ber.  At one  time  they seemed more nume-
rous, but  closer  observation  convinced  me
that most of those whom I thought drunken-
ness had libelled, inherited, at bottom, the  ge-
nuine dispositions which it brought forth. 
CHAPTER IV.
drunkenness modified by temperament.
  Under the last head I have  described the
usual phenomena of intoxication; but it is ne-
cessary to remark, that these are apt to be mo-
dified by the  physical and moral frame of the
drinker.   Great diversity  of opinion  exista
with regard  to the doctrine of  the tempera-
ments: the ancients, and Richerand* and others
among the moderns, affirming, and Spurzheinf
denying their existence.   Into this controver-
sy it is needless to enter.   All  I contend for
is, that the bodily and mental constitution of
every man is not alike, and that on these pecu-
* Nouveaux Elemens de Physiologic
 f Observations sur la Phraenologie. 
43
 liarities depend certain differences during a pa-
 roxysm of drunkenness.

   I. Sanguineous Drunkard.—The sanguine
 temperament seems to feel most intensely the
 excitement of the bottle. Persons of this stamp
 have usually a ruddy complexion, thick  neck,
 small head, and strong muscular fibre.  Their
 intellect is in general mediocre,  for great bodi-
 ly strength and corresponding mental powers
 are rarely united  together.   In such people,
 the animal propensities prevail over the moral
 and intellectual ones.  They are  prone to com-
 bativeness and  sensuality, and are either very
 good-natured or extremely quarrelsome.   All
 their passions are keen:  like the  Irish women,
 they will  fight  for their friends  or with  them
 as occasion requires.   They are talkative from
 the beginning, and, during confirmed intoxica-
 tion, perfectly obstreperous.   It  is men of this
 class who  are the heroes of all  drunken compa-
 nies, the patrons of masonic lodges, the presi-
 dents and  getfers-up of jovial meetings.  With
 them, eating and drinking are the grand  ends
 of human  life.  Look at their eyes, how they
 sparkle at the  sight of  wine, and  how  their
 lips smack and  their teeth water in the neigh-
 bourhood of a good dinner: they would scent
 out a banquet in Siberia.  When intoxicated,
their passions are highly excited: the energies
of a hundred minds then seem  concentrated 
44
 into one focus. Their mirth, their anger, their
 love, their folly, are all equally intense and un-
 quenchable.  Such men cannot conceal their
 feelings.  In drunkenness, the veil is removed
 from them, and their characters stand revealed,
 as in a glass, to the eye of the beholder.   The
 Roderick  Random of Smollethad much  of this
 temperament, blended, however, with more
 intellect than usually belongs to it.

  II. Melancholy Drunkard.—Melancholy,
 in drunkards, sometimes arises from tempera-
 ment, but more frequently  from habitual in-
 toxication  or misfortune.   Some  men  are
 melancholy  by  nature, but  become highly
 mirthful when they have drunk a considerable
 quantity.  Men of this tone of mind seem to
 enjoy the bottle  more  exquisitely  than even
 the sanguineous class.   The joyousness  which
 it excites breaks in upon their gloom like  sun-
shine upon  darkness.   Above all,  the  sensa-
tions, at the  moment when mirth begins with
its magic  to charm away  care, are inexpressi-
ble.  Pleasure  falls  in showers of  fragrance
upon their souls;  they are at peace with them-
selves and all mankind, and enjoy, as it were
a foretaste of paradise.   Robert Burns was an
example of this variety.  His melancholy  was
constitutional, but heightened by misfortune.
 lhe bottle commonly  dispelled  it,  and gave 
45
rise to the most delightful images; sometimes,
however, it only aggravated the gloom.

  III.  Surly Drunkard.—Some men are not
excited to mirth by intoxication.   On the con-
trary, it renders them gloomy and discontent-
ed.   Even those  who in the sober state are
sufficiently gay, become occasionally thus alter-
ed.   A great  propensity to take offence is a
characteristic among persons of  this tempera-
ment.  They  are  suspicious,  and very often
mischievous.   If  at some former period they
have had a difference with any of the company,
they are sure to revive it, although, probably,
it has been long ago cemented on both sides,
and even forgotten by the other party.   People
of this description are very unpleasant compa-
nions.  They are  in general so  foul-tongued,
quarrelsome, and indecent in conversation, that
established' clubs of drinkers have  made it a
practice to exclude them  from  their society.

  IV.  Phlegmatic  Drunkard.—Persons  of
this temperament  are heavy-rolling machines,
and, like  the above, are no> roused to mirth by
liquor.  Their vital actions a ie dull and spirit-
less—the  blood in their veins as  sluggish as
the river  Jordan,  and  their energies  stagnant
as the Dead Sea.   They  are altogether a nega-
tive sort of beings, with  passions too  inert to
lead them to any thing very good or very bad.
                    E 
46
They are a species of animated  clods, but not
thoroughly animated—for the vital fire of feel-
ing has got cooled in penetrating  their frozen
frames.  A new Prometheus would require to
breathe into their  nostrils, to give them the or-
dinary glow and warmth of humanity.   Look
at a phlegmatic man—how  dead, passionless,
and uninspired is the expression of his clammy
lips and vacant eye! Speak to him—how cold,
slow, and tame is  his conversation!  The words
come forth as if  they were drawn  from his
mouth with a pair of pincers;  and  the ideas
are as, frozen  as if concocted in the  bowels of
Laplaid.  Liquor produces no effect upon his
mental powers; or, if it does, it is a smother-
ing one.  The whole energies of the drink fall
on his almost impassive frame. From the first,
his drunkenness is stupifying; he is seized with
a kind of lethargy, the white of his eyes turns
up, he breathes loud  and harshly,  and sinks
into an apoplectic stupor.  Yet  all this is per-
fectly harmless, and wears away without leav-
ing  any mark  behind  it.   Such  persons are
very apt to be played upon by their  compa-
nions.   There  are few men  who,  in their
younger days, have not assisted in shaving the
heads and painting the faces of  these lethargic
drunkards.

   V. Nervous Drunkard.—This is  a very
harmless and very tiresome personage.  Gene- 
47
rally of a weak mind and irritable constitution,
he does not become boisterous with mirth, and
rarely shows  the least  glimmering of  wit  or
mental energy.   He is talkative  and fond of
long-winded stories, which he tells in a  drivel-
ling,  silly manner.   Never warmed into en-
thusiasm by liquor, he keeps chatting at some
ridiculous tale, very much in the way of a gar-
rulous old man in his dotage.*

  VI. Choleric  Drunkard.—There are a va-
riety of drunkards whom I can only class un-
der the above title.   They seem to possess few
of the  qualities  of  the other  races, and are
chiefly distinguished by an uncommon testiness
of disposition.  They are quick, irritable, and
impatient, but withal good at heart, and, when
in humour, very  pleasant and generous.  They
are easily  put out  of temper, but it returns
almost immediately.   This disposition is very
prevalent  among Welshmen  and  Highland
lairds.  Mountaineers are usually  quick-tem-
pered; but such men are not the worst or most
unpleasant.  Sterne is undoubtedly right when
he says that more virtue is to be found in warm

  * The old gentleman who  is represented as speaking,
in Bunbury's admirable caricature of the " Long Story,"
furnishes one of the' best  illustrations I have ever seen of
this variety.  It is worth consulting both on account of the
story-teller, and the effect his tedious  garrulity produces
upon the company. 
48
than in cold dispositions.  Commodore  Trun-
nion i3 a marked example of this temperament;
and  Captain Fluellen, who compelled the he-
roic Pistol to eat the leek, is another.

  VII.  Periodical  Drunkard.—There  are
persons whose temperaments are so peculiarly
constituted, that they indulge to excess peri-
odically, and are, in the  intervals of these in-
dulgences, remarkably sober.   This is  not a
very common case,  but  I have known more
than one  instance of it; and a gentleman, dis-
tinguished by the power of his eloquence in
the senate and at  the  bar, is said to furnish
another.  In the cases which I have  known,
the drunken  mania, for  it can  get no  other
name, came on three or four times a-year. The
persons, from a state of complete sobriety, felt
the most intense desire for drink; and no pow-
er short of absolute force or confinement could
restrain them from the indulgence.  In  every
case  they  seemed to be quite aware of the un-
controllable  nature of their  passion, and pro-
ceeded systematically by confining themselves
to their room, and procuring a large quantity of
ardent spirits.   As soon as this was done, they
commenced and  drank to excess till vomiting
ensued, and the stomach absolutely refused  to
receive  another  drop of liquor.   This   state
may last a few days or a few weeks, according
to constitutional strength, or the rapidity with 
49
which the libations are poured down.  During
the continuance of the attack, the individual
exhibits surh a state of mind as may be looked
for from his peculiar temperament: he may be
sanguineous, or melancholy, or surly, or phleg-
matic, or nervous, or choleric.   So soon as the
stomach rejects every thing that is swallowed,
and severe sickness comes on, the fit ceases.
From that  moment, recovery takes place, and
his former fondness for liquor is succeeded by
aversion or disgust.  This gains such ascenden-
cy over him, that he abstains religiously from
it for  weeks, or months, or even for a year, as
the case may be.  During this interval, he leads
a life of the most exemplary temperance, drink-
ing nothing but cold water, and probably shun-
ning every society where he is likely to be ex-
posed to indulgence.  So soon as this period of
sobriety has expired, the fit again comes  on;
and he continues playing the same  game for
perhaps the better part of a  long life.  This
class of persons I would call periodical drunk-
ards.

  These different varieties are sometimes found
strongly marked; at other times so blended to-
gether that it is not easy to  say which predo-
minates.   The most agreeable drunkard is  he
whose temperament lies  between the sangui-
neous and the melancholic.  The  genuine san-
guineous is a sad noisy dog, and  so  common,
                    e2 
50
that  every person  must have  met with him.
The  naval service furnishes a great many gen-
tlemen of this description.   The phlegmatic,
I think, is rarer, but both the nervous and the
surly are not unusual. 
CHAPTER V.
DRUNKENNESS MODIFIED BY THE INEBRIATING
                   AGENT.
  Intoxication is not only influenced by tem-
perament, but by the nature of the agent which
produces it.  Thus, ebriety from ardent spirits
differs in some particulars from that brought on
by opium or malt  liquors, such as porter and
ale.

  I. Modified by  Ardent Spirits.—Alcohol
is  the principle  of intoxication  in all  liquors.
It is this which gives to wine,* ale, and spirits,

  • Alcohol appears to exist in wines,  in a very peculiar
state of combination.  In the Appendix,  I have availed
myself of Dr. Paris's valuable remarks on this subject. 
53
their characteristic properties.  In the natural
state, however, it is so pungent, that it could
not  be received into the stomach, even in a
moderate  quantity,  without producing  death.
It can, therefore,  only  be used in dilution; and
in this state we have it from the strongest ar-
dent spirits,  to the  simple small  beer.   The
first (ardent  spirits) being  the  most concen-
trated  of  its combinations, act  most rapidly
upon the constitution.   They are more inflam-
matory,  and intoxicate sooner  than  any  of
the others.   Swallowed in an overdose, they
act almost instantaneously—extinguishing the
senses and overcoming the whole body  with a
sudden  stupor.   When spirits are swallowed
raw, as in the form of a dram, they excite a
glow of heat in the throat  and  stomach, suc-
ceeded, in those who are not much accustomed i
to their use,  by a flushing of the countenance,
and  a copious discharge of tears.  They are
strongly diuretic.
  Persons who  indulge too much in  spirits
rarely  get corpulent, unless their indulgence
be  coupled with  good living.  Their  bodies
become emaciated;  they get spindle-shanked;
their eyes are glazed and hollow; their cheeks
fall in;  and  a  premature  old age overtakes
them.  They do not eat so well as their bro-
ther drunkards.  An  insatiable  desire  for  a
morning  dram makes  them early risers, and
their breakfast amounts to almost nothing. 
53
  The principal varieties of spirits, as already
mentioned, are rum, brandy, whisky, and gin.
It is needless to  enter into  any detail  of the
history of these fluids.   Brandy kills soonest;
it takes most rapidly to the head, and, more
readily than  the  others, tinges the face  to  a
crimson or livid  hue.   Rum is probably the
next in point of fatality; and, after that, gin
and whisky.   The superior  diuretic qualities
of the two latter, and  the less luscious sources
from which they are procured, may possibly
account for such differences.  I am at the same
time aware that some  persons  entertain a dif-
ferent  idea of the  relative  danger  of  these
liquors; some, for instance, conceive that gin
is more rapidly fatal than any of them; but it
is to be remembered,  that it,  more than  any
other ardent spirit, is liable to adulteration.
That, from this circumstance, more lives  may
be lost by its use, I do not deny.   In speaking
of gin, however, and comparing its effects  with
those of the rest of the  class to which it belongs,
I must be understood to speak of it in its  pure
condition,  and not in  that detestable state of
sophistication in which such  vast quantities of
it are drank in London and elsewhere.  When
pure, I have  no hesitation in affirming that it
is decidedly more wholesome  than  either
brandy or rum; and that the  popular belief of
its greater tendency to  produce dropsy, is quite
unfounded. 
54
   An experiment has lately been made for the
 purpose of ascertaining the comparative powers
 of gin, brandy, and rum, upon the human body,
 which is not less remarkable for the inconse-
 quent conclusions  deduced from  it, than for
 the ignorance it displays  in  confounding dead
 animal matter with the living  fibre.   It was
 made as follows:—
   A piece of raw liver was put into a glass of
 gin, another into a glass of rum,  and a third
 into a glass of brandy.  That in the gin  was, in
 a  given time, partially  decomposed;  that  in
 the rum,  in the same  time,  not  diminished;
 and that in the brandy quite dissolved.  It was
 concluded, from these  results,  that rum was
 the most  wholesome  spirit of the  three, and
 brandy the  least.  The  inferences  deduced
 from these premises are not only erroneous, but
 glaringly absurd; the premises would even afford
 grounds for drawing results of the very oppo-
 site nature:  it might be said,  for instance, that
 though brandy be capable of dissolving dead
 animal matter, there is no evidence that it can
 do the same to the living stomach, and thatit-
 would in  reality prove less  hurtful than the
 others, in  so far as  it would, more effectually
than they, dissolve  the food contained in that
organ.   These   experiments,  in fact,  prove
nothing; and could  only have been suggested
by one completely ignorant of the functions of
the animal economy. There is a power inherent 
55
in  the vital  principle  which resits  the  laws
that operate upon dead matter.  This is known
to every practitioner, and is the  reason  why
the most plausible  and recondite  speculations
of  chemistry  have come to naught in  their
trials upon  the living frame.  The  only way to
judge of the respective  effects of ardent spirit,
is by experience and physiological reasoning,
both of which inform us, that  the spirit  most
powerfully diuretic and  least  nourishing for
the blood,  must rank highest in the  scale of
safety.

  II. Modified by Wines.—Drunkenness  from
wines  closely  resembles  that from  ardent
spirits.  It is  equally airy and volatile, more
especially  if the light wines, such as  Cham-
paign,  Claret,  Chambertin, or  Volnay, be
drunk. On  the former, a person may get tipsy
several times of a night. The fixed air  evolved
from it produces a feeling analogous to  ebriety,
independent of  the  spirit it contains.  Port,
Sherry, and Madeira, are heavier wines,  and
have a stronger tendency to  excite  headach
and fever.
  The  wine-bibber  has usually  an  ominous
rotundity of  face,  and,  not unfrequently, of
corporation.  His nose  is well studded over
with carbuncles of the claret complexion;  and
the red  of  his cheeks resembles very closely
the hue of that wine.   The drunkard from 
56
ardent spirits is apt to be a poor, miserable, ema-
ciated figure, broken in mind  and in  fortune;
but the votary  of the juice of the grape may
usually boast the "paunch well-lined with  ca-
pon," and  calls to recollection the bluff figure
of  Sir John Falstaff  over  his  potations  of
Sack. *

  III. Modified by Malt  Liquors.—Malt  li-
quors, under which title we  include all kinds
of porter  and  ales, produce the worst species
of drunkenness; as, in addition to the intoxi-
cating principle, some  noxious ingredients  are
usually added,  for the purpose of  preserving
them and giving them  their  bitter.   The hop
of these fluids  is highly narcotic, and  brewers
often add  other substances, to  heighten its ef-
fect, such  as hyoscyamus,t opium, belladonna,

  * There is reason to believe that the Sack of Shakspeare
was Sherry.—"Falstaff.  You rogue! here's lime in this
Sack too.  There is nothing but roguery to be found in
villanous man.  Yet a coward is worse than a cup of Sack
with lime in  it."—Lime, it is well known, is added to the
grapes in the manufacture of Sherry.  This not only give*
the wine what is called its dry quality, but  probably acts
by neutralising a portion of the malic or tartaric acid.
  f The intoxicating properties of hyoscyamus appear to
have been known  from a very early period.  It was with
this plant that the Assassin  Prince, commonly  called the
"Old Man of the Mountain," inebriated his followers, pre-
paratory to installing them into his service.   The follow- 
57
 cocculus  Indicus,  lauro cerasus, &c.   Malt li-
 quors, therefore,  act  in two  ways  upon  the


 ing eloquent passage from a modern writer will prove
 interesting:—
   "There was at Alamoot, and also at Masiat, in  Syria, a
 delicious garden, encompassed with lofty walls,  adorned
 with trees and  flowers of every kind—with murmuring
 brooks and translucent lakes—with bovvers of roses and
 trelisses of the  vine—airy halls and splendid kiosks, fur-
 nished with carpets  of Persia and silks of Byzantium.
 Beautiful maidens and blooming boys were the inhabitants
 of this delicious spot, which resounded with the melody of
 birds, the  murmur of streams, and the tones and voices
 of instruments—all respired contentment and pleasure.
 When the Chief had noticed any youth to be distinguish-
 ed for strength and resolution, he  invited him to a  ban-
 quet,  where  he placed  him  beside himself, conversed
 with him on the happiness reserved for the  faithful, and
 contrived to administer to him an  intoxicating  draught,
 prepared from the hyoscyamus.  While insensible, he was
 conveyed to the garden of delight, and there awakened
 by the application of vinegar.  On opening  his eyes, all
 Paradise met his view;  the black-eyed and blue-robed
 houris surrounded him,  obedient to his wishes: sweet
 music filled his  ears; the richest viands were served up in
 the most costly vessels, and the  choicest  wines sparkled
jjn golden  cups.  The fortunate youth believed himself
■really in the Paradise of the Prophet, and  the language of
 jnis attendants confirmed the delusion.  When he  had had
 his fill of enjoyment, and nature was yielding to exhaus-
,.tion, the opiate was again administered, and the sleeper
 transported back to the side  of  the Chief,  to whom he
 communicated what had passed, and who  assured him  of
 the truth and reality of all he had experienced, telling him
 such was the bliss reserved for the obedient servants  of
 the Imaum, and enjoining, at  the same time, the strictest
                           P 
                     58

body, partly by the alcohol they contain, and
partly by the narcotic  principle.  In  addition
to this, the fermentation which they  undergo
is much less perfect than that of spirits  or wine.
After being  swallowed, this process is carried
on in the stomach, by  which fixed air is copi-
ously liberated, and  the digestion of delicate
stomachs materially impaired.   Cider, spruce,
ginger, and table beers, in consequence of their
imperfect fermentation, often produce the same
bad  effects, long after  their first briskness has
vanished.
  Persons addicted  to malt  liquors  increase
enormously in bulk.  They become loaded with
fat:  their chin gets double or triple, the eye.j
prominent, and the whole face bloated and stu- ?■
pid.  Their  circulation is clogg«4j while the
pulse feels like a cord, and is full and labour-
ing, but  not quick.   During sleep, the breath-^
ing  is stertorous.   Every  thing  indicates an
excess of blood; and when a pound or  two  is
taken away, immense relief is obtained.   The
blood, in  such  cases,  is more  dark and sizy
than in the others.  In seven cases out of ten,
malt liquor drunkards die of apoplexy or palsy.


secrecy.  Ever after, the rapturous vision possessed the
imagination of the deluded enthusiast, and he panted for
the hour when death, received in obeying the  commands
of his superior, should dismiss him to the bowers  of Para-
dise."— Von Hammer's Hist, of the Assassins. 
59
 If  they escape  this hazard, swelled liver or
 dropsy carries them off.  The abdomen seldom
 loses its prominency, but the lower extremities
 get ultimately emaciated.   Profuse bleedings
 frequently ensue from the nose, and save life,
 by emptying the blood-vessels of the brain.
   The drunkenness in question is peculiarly of
 British growth.  The most noted examples of
 it are to be found in innkeepers and their wives,
 recruiting  Serjeants,  guards of stage-coaches,
 &c.  The quantity of malt liquors which such
 persons will consume in a day is prodigious.
 Seven English pints is quite a common allow-
 ance, and not unfrequently twice that quantity
 is taken without any perceptible effect.  Many
 of  the  coal-heavers on the Thames  think  no-
thing  of drinking daily two gallons of porter,
 especially in  the  summer season, when they
 labour  under  profuse perspirations.   A friend
 has informed me that he knew an  instance of
 one of them having consumed eighteen pints
 in  one day, and he states that there are many
 such instances.
  The  effects of malt liquors on the body, if
 not so immediately rapid as those of ardent spi-
 rits, are more stupifying, more lasting, and less
 easily  removed.  The  last are  particularly
 prone to produce levity and mirth, but the first
 have a  stunning influence upon the brain, and,
 in  a short time, render dull and sluggish the 
60
gayest disposition.   They also  produce  sick-
ness  and vomiting  more  readily than either
spirits or wine.
  Both wine and malt liquors have a greater
tendency to swell the body than ardent spirits.
They form blood with greater rapidity, and are
altogether more nourishing.  The most dread-
ful  effects, upon the whole, are  brought on by
spirits,  but drunkenness from malt liquors  is
the most speedily  fatal.   The former break
down the body by  degrees:  the latter operate
by  some instantaneous apoplexy or rapid in-
flammation.
  No one has ever given the  respective charac-!
ters of the malt and  ardent spirit drunkard with
greater truth than Hogarth, in his Beer Alley
and Gin Lane.  The  first  is represented as
plump,  rubicund, and bloated;  the second aa
pale, tottering,  and  emaciated, and dashed over
with the aspect of blank depair.

  IV. Modified by  Opium.—The drunkenness
produced by opium  has also  some characteris-
tics which it is necessary to mention.   This
drug is principally employed by the Mahome-
tans.   By their religion these people are for-
bidden  the use of wine,* and use opium  as a

  • "The law of Mahomet which prohibits the drinking
of wine, is a  law fitted to the climate of Arabia; and, in-
deed, before Mahomet's time, water was the common drink 
61
substitute.   And  a  delightful substitute it is
while the first excitation continues; for the im-
ages it occasions in the mind are  more exqui-
site than any produced even by wine.
  There is reason to believe that the use of
this medicine has, of late years, gained ground
in Great Britain.  We are told by the "Eng-
lish  Opium-Eater,"* whose powerful  and in-
teresting " Confessions" have  excited  so deep
an interest, that the practice exists among  the
work people  at  Manchester.   Many of  our
fashionable ladies have  recourse to  it when
troubled with vapours, or low spirits:  some of
them even carry  it about with them for  the
purpose.   This practice is most pernicious, and
no way different from that of drunkards, who
swallow wine and other liquors to drive away
care.   While the  first effects continue, the in-
tended  purpose is sufficiently gained, but  the
melancholy which follows is infinitely greater
than can be compensated by the  previous  ex-
hilaration.
  Opium acts differently  on different  constitu-
tions.   While  it  disposes some to  calm, it
arouses others to fury.  Whatever passion pre-


of the Arabs. The law which forbade the Carthaginians
to drink wine, was also a law of the climate."—Montes-
quieu, Book xiv., Chap. x.
  • London Magazine, Vols. IV. and VI. Old Series.
                     f2 
62
dominates at the time, it increases; whether it
be love, or hatred, or revenge, or benevolence.
Lord  Karnes, in his  Sketches of Man, speaks
of the fanatical Faquirs, who, when excited by
this drug, have been known, with  poisoned
daggers, to assail and butcher every European
whom they could overcome.  In the century
before last, one of  this nation attacked a body
of Dutch  sailors, and murdered seventeen  of
them in one minute.  The Malays are strongly
addicted to opium.  When violently aroused
by it, they sometimes perform what is called
Running-a-Muck, which consists in rushing
out in a state of phrenzied excitement,  height-
ened by fanaticism, and murdering every one
who comes in their way.  The Turkish com-
manders are well aware of the powers of this
drug in inspiring an artificial courage; and fre-
quently give it to their  men when they put
them on any enterprise of great danger.
   Some minds  are  rendered melancholy by
opium.  Its usual  effect, however, is  to giva
rise to lively and happy sensations.  The late
Dutchess of Gordon is said to have used it free-
ly, previous to appearing in great parties, where
she wished to shine by the gayety  of her con-
versation  and  brilliancy of her  wit.   A cele-
brated pleader at the Scotch bar is reported to
do the same thing, and always  with a happy
effect 
63
   In this country opium is much used, but sel-
 dom with  the view of producing intoxication.
 Some, indeed, deny that it  can do so, strictly
 speaking.   If by intoxication is meant  a state
 precisely similar to that from over-indulgence
 in vinous  or spirituous liquors,  they are un-
 doubtedly  right;  but  drunkenness  merits  a
 wider latitude of signification.  The ecstacies
 of opium are much more entrancing than those
 of wine.   There is more poetry in its visions
 —more  mental aggrandizement—more  range
 of imagination.   Wine, in common with it,
 invigorates the animal powers and propensi-
 ties;  but opium, in a more peculiar manner,
 strengthens those proper to man, and gives, for
 a period amounting to hours, a higher tone to
 the intellectual faculties.   It inspires the mind
 with a thousand delightful images, lifts the soul
 from earth, and casts a halo of poetic thought
 and feeling over the spirits of the most unima-
 ginative.   Under its influence, the mind wears
 no longer that blank passionless aspect which,
 even in gifted natures, it is apt to assume.   On
 the contrary,  it  is clothed  with beauty, "as
 with  a  garment," and colours every thought
 that  passes through it with the hues of wonder
 and romance.   Such are the feelings which the
 luxurious and opulent Mussulman seeks to en-
joy.   To stir up the languid current of his
 mind, satiated with excess of pleasure, and ren- 
64
dered sluggish by indolence, he  has  recourse
to that remedy which  his own genial climate
produces in  greatest perfection.  Seated  per-
haps amid the luxuries of Oriental splendour—
with fountains bubbling around, and the citron
shading him with its  canopy,  and scattering
perfume on all sides—he lets loose the reins of
an imagination, conversant from  infancy with
every thing  gorgeous  and magnificent.   The
veil which shades the  world of fancy is with-
drawn, and the wonders lying behind  it expos-
ed to view:  he sees palaces and temples in the
clouds; or the Paradise of Mahomet, with its
houris and bowers of amaranth, may stand re-
vealed  to his excited  senses.  Every thing is
steeped in poetic exaggeration.   The zephyrs
seem converted into aerial music, the trees  bear
golden fruit, the rose blushes with unaccustom-
ed beauty and perfume.   Earth, in a word, is
brought nearer to the  sky,  and becomes one
vast Eden of pleasure.   Such  are the first ef-
fects of opium; but in  proportion  as  they are
great, so is the depression which succeeds them.
Languor and exhaustion invariably come after;
to remove which, the drug is again had  re-
course to, and becomes almost an essential of
existence.
  Opium retains at all times its power  of excit-j
ing the imagination, provided  sufficient doses
are taken.   But,  when it has been continued 
65
so long as to bring disease  upon  the constitu-
tion, the pleasurable feelings wear away, and
are  succeeded  by others of a very different
kind.   Instead  of disposing the  mind  to be
happy, it now acts upon it like the  spell  of  a
demon, and calls  up phantoms of horror and
disgust.  The fancy is  still as powerful as ever,
but it is turned in another direction.   Former-
ly it clothed  all objects with the  light of  hea-
ven;  now it  invests  them with  the attributes
of hell.  Goblins, spectres, and  every  kind
of distempered  vision  haunt the mind, peo-
pling it with dreary and  revolting imagery.
The sleep is no longer  cheered with  its former
sights of happiness.   Frightful dreams  usurp
their place, till, at last, the person becomes the
victim of an almost perpetual misery.*


  • The following description, by a modern traveller, of a
scene witnessed by him in the East, gives a lively picture
of the effects of this drug:—
  " There is a decoction of the head and seeds of the pop-
py, which they call Coquenar, for the sale of which there
are taverns in every quarter of the town, similar to our
coffee-houses.  It is  extremely  amusing to visit these
houses, and to observe carefully those who  resort there
for the purpose of drinking  it, both before they have ta-
ken the dose, before it begins to operate, and while it is
operating. On entering the  tavern, they are dejected and
languishing: soon after they have taken two or three cups
of this beverage, they are peevish; and, as it were, enrag-
ed; every thing  displeases  them.  They find fault with 
                      66

   Opium resembles the other agents of intoxi- I
cation in this, that the fondness for it increases
with  use,  and that, at last, it becomes nearly
essential for bodily comfort and peace of mind;
There are  many persons who make a  practice
of swallowing half an ounce of laudanum night
and morning, and some will even  take from
one to two drachms daily of solid opium.  The
"English  Opium-Eater" himself, furnishes the
most  extraordinary instance on record of the
power of habit in bringing the  body  to with-
stand  this drug.   He took  daily eight  thoU'
sand  drops  of  laudanum, containing  three
hundred and twenty grains of opium.  This
enormous  quantity he  reduced  suddenly, and
without  any  considerable effort, to  one  thou-
sand drops, or forty grains.   " Instantane-
ously,"  says  he,  " and as  if  by magic,  the
cloud of profoundest  melancholy which rested
upon  my brain, like some black vapours which

every  thing, and quarrel with one another, but in the
course of its operation they make it up again;—and, each
one giving himself up to his predominant  passion—the j
lover speaks  sweet things to his idol—another, half asleep,
laughs in  his sleeve—a third talks big and blusters—a
fourth  tells ridiculous stories.  In a word, a person would
believe himself to  be really in a mad-house.  A kind of
lethargy and stupidity succeed to this  disorderly gayety;
but the Persians, far-from treating it as it deserves, call it
an ecstacy, and maintain that there is something exquisite
and heavenly in this state."—Chardin. 
67
I have seen roll away from the summits of the
mountains, drew off in one  day; passed off
with its murky banners, as simultaneously as a
ship that has been  stranded, and is floated off
by the spring-tide."
  The circumstance of the body being brought
by  degrees to  withstand  a great quantity of
opium is not solitary, but exists as a general
rule with regard to all stimulants and narcotics.
A person who is in the habit of drinking ale,
wine, or spirits, will take much more with im-
punity than one who is not; and the faculty of
withstanding these agents  goes on strengthen-
ing till it acquires a certain point, after which it
becomes weakened.   When this takes place,
there is either organic disease or  general debi-
lity.  A confirmed  drunkard, whose  constitu-
tion has suffered from indulgence, cannot take
so much liquor, without feeling it, as  one who
is in the habit  of taking his glass, but whose
strength is yet  unimpaired.   It is, I  suspect,
the same, though probably in a less  degree,
with regard to opium.
  Mithridates,  king of Pontus, affords an in-
stance of the effects of habit  in  enabling  the
body to withstand poisons; and, on the same
principle,  we find  that physicians and nurses
who are much exposed to infection, are less lia-
ble to take it than those persons whose frames
are not similarly fortified. 
68
   Opium resembles wine, spirits, and ales, in
affecting the  brain  and disposing to apoplexy.
Taken in an over-dose, it is fatal in four or
five hours.  The person is seized with  giddi-
ness,  and then falls into a stupor from which it
is almost impossible to arouse him.   His eyea
are closed; his face at first flushed and turgid,
afterwards pale and  clammy; his pulse slow;
his breathing stertorous;  and  his body con-
vulsed.
   I extract the following interesting case of
opium-eating from a London paper:
   "An inquest was held at Walpole lately, on
the body of  Rebecca  Eason, aged  five  years,
who had been diseased from her birth, was un-
able to walk  or  articulate, and,  from her size,
did not appear to be more than five weeks old.
The mother  had for many years been in the
habit  of  taking  opium  in large  quantities,
(nearly a quarter of an ounce a-day;*)  and, it
is supposed, had entailed a disease on her child
which caused its death; it was reduced to a
mere  skeleton, and had been in that state from
birth.  Verdict;  'Died  by  the visitation of
God;  but from  the great quantity of opium
taken by the mother during her pregnancy of
the said child, and of suckling it, she had  great-
ly injured its health.'  It  appeared that the
• Equal to nearly three thousand drops of laudanum. 
69
mother of the deceased had had five children;
that she began to take opium after the birth and
weaning of her first child, which was and is re-'
markably healthy; and that the other children
have all lingered and died in the same emaciat-
ed state as the child who was the  subject  of
this investigation. The mother is under thirty:
she was severely censured by the Coroner for
indulging in so pernicious a practice."

  V.  Modified  by  Tobacco.—A  variety  of
drunkenness is excited by tobacco.   This lux-
ury was introduced into Europe from the New
World, in 1559,  by a Spanish gentleman, nam-
ed Hernandez de Toledo, who brought a small
quantity  into Spain  and   Portugal.  From
thence, by the agency of the  French ambassa-
dor at Lisbon, it  found its way to Paris, where
it was used in the form of powder by Catherine
de Medicis, the abandoned  instigator  of the
massacre  of  the Protestants on  St. Bartholo-
mew's day.   This woman, therefore, may be
considered the inventor of snuff, as well as the
contriver of that most atrocious transaction.  It
then  came under the patronage of the Cardinal
Santa Croce, the Pope's nuncio,  who, return-
ing from  his embassy at the Spanish and Por-
tuguese courts, carried the plant to his own
country, and  thus acquired a fame little infe-
rior to that which, at another period, he had
                     G 
70
won by piously bringing a portion of the real
cross from the Holy Land.   It was received
with general enthusiasm in the Papal states,
and  hardly  less favourably  in England, into
which it was introduced by Sir Walter Raleigh,
in 1585.   It was not, however, without oppo-
sition that it gained a footing either in this
country or in the rest of Europe.  Its  princi-
pal opponents were the priests, the physicians,
and the sovereign princes:  by the former  its
use was declared  sinful; and  in 1624, Pope
Urban  VIII. published a bull, excommunicat-
ing all  persons found  guilty  of taking  snuff
when in church.   This bull was renewed  in
1690 by Pope  Innocent; and about twenty-
nine years afterwards, the Sultan Amurath IV.
made smoking a capital  offence, on the ground
of its producing infertility.   For  a  long time
smoking was forbidden in Russia, under pain
of having the nose cut off:  and in some  parts
of Switzerland,  it was likewise made a subject
of public  prosecution—the  police regulations
of the Canton of Berne, in  1661, placing the
prohibition of smoking in  the list of the ten
commandments, immediately under that against
adultery.  Nay, that British Solomon, James
I. did not  think it beneath the royal dignity to
take up his pen upon the subject.   He accord-
ingly, in 1603, published his famous " Coun-
terblaste to Tobacco,"  in which the following 
71
remarkable passage occurs:—" It is a custom
loathesome to  the  eye, hatefull to the  nose,
harmfull to the braine, dangerous to the lungs,
and, in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest
resembling the horrible Stygian smoake of the
pit that is bottomless."  But notwithstanding
this regal  and  sacerdotal wrath, the plant ex-
tended itself far and wide, and is at this moment
the most universal luxury in existence.
  The effects of tobacco are considerably diffe-
rent from those of any other inebriating agent.
Instead of quickening, it lowers the pulse, and,
when used to excess, produces languor, depres-
sion of the  system, giddiness, confusion  of
ideas, violent pain  in  the stomach, vomiting,
convulsions, and even  death.  Its essential oil
is so  intensely powerful,  that  two  or  three
drops inserted into  a raw wound, would prove
almost instantly fatal.   But when used in mo-
deration, it has  a soothing effect upon the mind,
disposing to placid enjoyment, and  mellowing
every passion into  repose.   Its  effects, there-
fore, are  inebriating; and those who habitually
indulge in it may with propriety be  denomi-
nated drunkards.   In whatever form it is used,
it produces sickness,  stupor,  bewilderment,
and staggering, in those unaccustomed to its
use.   There is no form in which it can be ta-
ken that is not decidedly injurious and disgust-
ing.   The whole, from  snuffing to plugging, 
72
are at once so utterly uncleanly and unnatural,
that it is incredible in what manner they ever
insinuated themselves into civilized society. A
vast quantity of valuable time is wasted by the
votaries of tobacco, especially by the smokers;
and that the devotees of snuff  are not greatly
behind in this respect, will be shown by the
following singular calculation of Lord  Stan-
hope.
   " Every professed, inveterate, and incurable
snuff-taker," says  his Lordship, "  at a mode-
rate computation, takes one pinch in ten mi-
nutes.   Every pinch, with the agreeable cere-
mony of blowing  and wiping the nose, and
other incidental circumstances, consumes a mi-
nute and a half.  One minute and a half out of
every ten, allowing sixteen hours to a snuff-
taking day, amounts to two hours and twenty-
four minutes out of every natural day, or one
day out  of ten.   One day out of every ten,
amounts to thirty-six days and  a half in a year.
Hence, if we suppose  the practice  to be per-
sisted in forty years,  two entire  years of the
snuff-taker's  life will  be dedicated to tickling
his nose, and two more to blowing it.  The
expense  of  snuff,  snuff-boxes, and handker-
chiefs, will be the  subject of a second essay, in
which it will appear that this luxury encroaches
as much  on the income of the  snuff-taker as it
does on his time,  and that by proper applica- 
73
tion  of the time and money thus lost to the
public,  a  fund  might be constituted for the
discharge of the  national debt."
  But  this is not the worst of  snuffing, for
though  a  moderate quantity, taken  now  and
then, may do no harm, yet, in  the  extent to
which habitual snuffers carry it, it is positively
pernicious.  The membrane which  lines the
nose gets thickened, the olfactory nerves blunt-
ed, and the sense of smell consequently im-
paired.   Nor is this all, for, by the  strong in-
spirations which, are made when the  powder is
drawn  up, some of the latter is pretty sure to
escape  into the stomach.   This organ is thence
directly  subjected  to a powerful   medicine,
which  not only acts as a narcotic, but produces
heartburn, and  every other  symptom of indi-
gestion.  It is  generally believed that  Napo-
leon owed his death to the morbid state  of his
stomach produced by excessive snuffing.  Snuff-
ing has also a strong tendency to give a deter-
mination to the head, and on this account ple-
thoric subjects should be the very last ever to
enter upon the habit.  If it were attended with
no other inconvenience, the black  loathsome
discharge from the nose, and swelling and rubi-
cundity of this organ, with other circumstances
equally disagreeable, ought to deter every man
from becoming a snuffer.
  The  smokery while engaged at his occupa-
                     g 2 
74
 tion, is even a happier man than the snuffer.
 An air of peculiar satisfaction beams upon his
 countenance; and as he puffs forth volumes  of
 fragrance, he seems to dwell in an atmosphere
 of  contented happiness.  His  illusions  have
 not the elevated and  magnificent  character of
 those brought on by opium or wine.   There is
 nothing 01 Raphael or Michael Angelo in their
 composition—nothing of the Roman or Vene-
 tian schools—nothing of Milton's sublimity  or
 Ariosto's dazzling romance; but there is some-
 thing equally delightful, and, in its way, equal-
 ly  perfect.   His visions  stand in the  same
 relation to those of opium or wine, as the Dutch
 pictures of Ostade to  the Italian ones of Paul
 Veronese—as Washington Irving to Lord By-
 ron—or as Izaak Walton to Froissart.  There
 is an air of delightful homeliness about them.
 He does not let his imagination  run riot in the
 clouds, but restrains it to the lower sphere  of
 earth,  and meditates delightfully  in this less
 elevated region.  If  his fancy be unusually
 brilliant, or  somewhat heated by previous
 drinking, he may see  thousands  of strange
 forms floating in the tobacco smoke.   He may
people  it, according to his temperament,  with
 agreeable or  revolting images—with flowers
and gems  springing up, as in dreams, before
him—or with reptiles, serpents, and the whole
host of diablerie, skimming,  like motes in the
 sunshine, amid its curling wreaths. 
75
  This is all that can be said in favour of smok-
ing, and quite enough to render the habit too
common to leave any hope of its suppression,
either by the weapons of ridicule, or the more
summary plan of the Sultan Amurath.  In no
sense, except as affording a temporary gratifi-
cation, can it be justified or defended.  It pol-
lutes the breath, blackens the  teeth, wastes the
saliva which is required for digestion, and in-
jures the  complexion.   In addition to this, it
is apt to produce dyspepsia, and other disorders
of the stomach; and, in  corpulent subjects, it
disposes to apoplexy.  At the present moment,
smoking  is  fashionable, and crowds of young
men are to  be seen at all hours walking the
streets with  cigars in their mouths, annoying
the passengers.  They  seem to  consider it
manly to be able to smoke a certain number,
without reflecting that there is scarcely an old
woman in the country who would not beat them
to naught with their own weapons, and that
they would gain no sort of honour  were they
able to outsmoke all the burgomasters of Am-
sterdam.   As  the  practice,  however, seems
more resorted to by these young gentlemen for
the sake of effect, and of exhibiting a little of
the haut  ton, than' for  any  thing else, it is
likely soon to die a natural death among them;
particularly as jockeys and porters have lately
taken the field in the same way, being deter- 
76
 mined that no class of the community shall en-
 joy the exclusive monopoly of street smoking.
   The observations made upon the effects of
 snuffing and smoking, apply in a still stronger
 degree to chewing.  This is the worst way for
 the health in which tobacco can be used.  The
 waste of saliva is greater than even in smoking,
 and  the  derangements of the  digestive  organs
 proportionably severe.   All confirmed chewers
 are more  than usually subject to dyspepsia and
 hypochondriasis; and many of them are afflicted
 with liver complaint, brought on by their im-
 prudent habit.
   The most innocent, and, at  the same time,
 most disgusting way of  using tobacco, is plug-
 ging, which consists in inserting a short roll of
 the plant  in the nostril, and allowing it to re-
 main there so long as the person feels disposed.
 Fortunately this habit  is  as rare as it  is abo-
 minable; and it is to be hoped that it will never
 become common in Great Britain.
   From several of the foregoing circumstances,
 we are justified in considering tobacco closely \
allied to intoxicating liquors, and its confirmed !
votaries as a species of drunkards.  At least, it
is  certain that when used  to excess,  it gives
birth to many of the corporeal and mental ma-
nifestations of ebriety.

  VI.  Modified  by  Nitrous Oxide.—-The
drunkenness, if it merit that name, from inhal- 
77
ing nitrous  oxide,  is likewise of a character
widely differing from intoxication in general.
This gas was discovered by Dr. Priestley, but
its peculiar effects upon the human body were
first perceived in 1799, by Sir Humphrey Davy,
who, in the following year, published a very
elaborate account of its  nature  and properties,
interspersed with details by some of the most
eminent literary and scientific characters, of the
sensations they experienced on receiving it into
their lungs.
  According to these statements, on breathing
the gas the pulse is accelerated, and a feeling of
heat and expansion pervades the chest  The
most vivid and  highly pleasurable ideas pass,
at the same time, through the mind; and the
imagination is exalted to a pitch of entrancing
ecstacy.  The hearing is rendered more acute,
the face is flushed, and the body seems so light
that the person  conceives himself capable  of
rising up and  mounting into the air.  Some
assume theatrical attitudes; others laugh immo-
derately, and stamp upon the ground.   There
is an universal increase of muscular power, at-
tended with the  most exquisite delight.  In a
few cases there are melancholy, giddiness, and
indistinct vision; but generally the feelings are
those of perfect pleasure. After these strange
effects have ceased, no debility  ensues, like
that which commonly follows high excitement
On the contrary, the mind is strong and col- 
78
lected,  and the body unusually vigorous for
some hours after the operation.
   At the time of the discovery of the effects of
nitrous  oxide, strong hopes were  excited that
it might  prove useful  in various  diseases.
These,  unfortunately, have not been realised.
Even the alleged properties of the  gas have
now fallen into some  discredit.   That it  has
produced remarkable effects, cannot be denied,
but there  is much reason for thinking that, in
many cases,  these  were principally  brought
about by the influence of imagination.  Phi-
losophers seem to be divided on this point, and
their conflicting testimonies I  do  not pretend
to reconcile.   My own opinion is, that there
must be some truth  in  its reported attributes;
but that by the power of fancy these attributes
have  been grossly, though unintentionally ex-
aggerated.   If  the statements first published
concerning it be true, the intoxication it pro-
duces is entirely one sui generis, and differs
so much from that produced  by other agents,
that it can hardly be looked upon as the same
thing.

  The above remarks appeared in the first edi-
tion of  this work, and  since writing them, I
have tried the experiment of  inhaling nitrous
oxide.   The principal effects it produced were
giddiness and violent beating in the head, such 
79
as occur in the acme of drunkenness.  There
was also a strong propensity to laugh: it occurs
to me, however, that the risible tendency might
be controlled by a strong effort of volition, in
the same way as in most cases of drunkenness,
were the  effort imperatively requisite.   Alto-
gether  I experienced nearly the sensations of
highly excited ebriety.  There was the same
seeming lightness and  expansion of the head,
the same  mirthfulness  of spirit, and  the same
inordinate  propensity  to  do  foolish things,
knowing them to be foolish, as occur in drunk-
enness in general.  I was perfectly aware what
I was about, and could, I am persuaded, with
some effort, have  subjected the whimsies of
fancy to the soberer dictates of judgment.  In a
word, the gas  produced precisely a temporary
paroxysm of drunkenness,  and such a deter-
mination of blood  upwards as rendered  the
complexion livid, and left behind some degree
of headach.  It would  be worth while  trying
whether similar effects would not follow  the
inhalation of oxygen -gas.  This is all I can say
on the subject from personal experience.  Those
who wish to know more,* should read Sir H.
Davy's work,  but, above all, they should  try
the gas upon themselves.  In the meantime I
shall lay-before the reader the details, in their
own words, of  the sensations experienced by
Messrs. Edge worth  and Coleridge. 
80
  Mr. Edge worth's Case.—"My first  sen-
sation was  an universal and  considerable tre- (
mor.  I  then perceived some giddiness in my
head, and a violent dizziness in my sight; these
sensations by degrees subsided, and  I felt a
great propensity to bite  through the wooden
mouth-piece, or the tube of  the bag  through
which I inspired the air.  After I had breathed
all the air that was in the bag, I eagerly wished
for  more.  I then felt a strong propensity to
laugh, and did burst into a  violent fit of laugh-
ter, and capered about the room without having
the power of restraining myself.   By degrees,
these feelings  subsided, except the  tremor,
which lasted for an hour after I had breathed
the air, and  1  felt a  weakness in my  knees.
The principal feeling through the whole of the
time, or what  I should  call  the characteristi-
cal  part of  the  effect, was  a  total  difficulty of
restraining   my feelings, both corporeal  and
mental, or,  in  other  words,  not  having any
command of myself."

  Mr. Coleridge's Case.—" The first time I
inspired  the nitrous  oxide,  I felt an  highly
pleasurable sensation of warmth over my whole
frame, resembling that which I once remember
to have  experienced after returning from  a
walk in the snow into  a  warm* room.   The
only motion which I felt inclined to make, was 
81
that of laughing at those who were looking at
me.   My eyes felt distended, and, towards the
last, my  heart beat as if it were leaping up and
down.   On removing the  mouth-piece,  the
whole sensation went off almost instantly.
   "The  second time, I felt the same pleasura-
ble sensation of warmth, but  not,  I think, in
quite  so  great  a degree.  I wished to  know
what effect it would have on my impressions; I
fixed  my eye  on some trees in  the distance,
but I  did not find any  other effect, except that
they became dimmer and dimmer, and looked
at last as  if I had seen them through tears. My
heart  beat more violently than the  first time.
This was after a hearty dinner.
   " The  third time, I was more violently acted
on than in the two former.   Towards the last,
I could not avoid, nor  indeed  felt any wish to
avoid, beating  the  ground with my feet; and,
after the  mouth-piece was removed, I remained
for a few seconds motionless,  in great  ec-
stacy.
   "The  fourth  time  was  immediately after
breakfast.  The  first few inspirations affected
me so little, that I thought Mr.  Davy had given
me atmospheric air; but soon  felt the warmth
beginning about my chest, and spreading  up-
ward  and downward,  so  that I cold feel its
progress  over my whole frame. My heart did
not beat so violently; my sensations were highly
                    H 
82
pleasurable, not so intense or apparently local,
but of more unmingled pleasure than I had ever
before experienced."*

  • The doses in these experiments were from five to
seven quarts. 
CHAPTER VI.
DIFFERENCES in the action of opium and
               ALCOHOL.
  The  modus operandi of opium upon  the
body is  considerably different from that of alco-
hol.   The latter intoxicates chiefly by acting
directly upon the nerves, the former by acting
secondarily  upon them, through the medium
of absorption.  This is easily proved by inject-
ing a quantity  of each  into the cellular tissue
of any animal,  and  comparing the effects with
those produced when either is received into  the
stomach.  M.  Orfila* details some  interesting
experiments  which  he made  upon dogs.   In
applying the watery extract of opium to them
in the first manner, (by injection into the cel-
* Toxicologic Ge'ne'rale. 
84
lular tissue,) immediate stupor, convulsions, and
debility ensued, and proved fatal in an hour or
two.   When, on the contrary, even  a larger
quantity was introduced into the stomach of
the animal, it survived ten, twelve, or eighteen
hours, although  the oesophagus was purposely
tied to prevent  vomiting.   The  operation  of
alcohol was the reverse of  this; for, when in-
jected into the cellular substance,  the effects
were  slight; but when carried into the stomach,
they  were powerful and almost instantaneous.
This proves that opium  acts chiefly by being
taken up  by the absorbents, as  this  is done
much more rapidly by the  drug being directly
applied to a raw surface than in  the stomach,
where the various secretions and processes of
digestion retard its  absorption.  Besides, alco-
hol, taken in quantity, produces instant stupe-
faction. It is no sooner swallowed than the per-
son drops down insensible.  Here is no time for
absorption: the whole energies of the spirit are
exerted against the nervous system.  The same
rapid privation  of  power  never occurs after
swallowing opium.   There  is always an inter-
val, and generally one of some extent, between
the swallowing and the stupor which succeeds.
Another proof that opium acts in this  manner,
is the circumstance of its  being  much more
speedily fatal than alcohol, when injected into
the blood-vessels.   Three or four grains in so-
lution, forced into  the carotid artery of a dog, 
85
 will kill him in a few minutes.  Alcohol, used
 in thersame manner,  would not bring on death
 for several hours.
   In addition,  it may be stated that a species of
 drunkenness is produced by inhaling the gas of
 intoxicating liquors.  Those employed  in bot-
 tling spirits  from  the cask, feel  it  frequently
 with great severity.  This proves that there is
 a close  sympathy  between the nerves of the
 nose and lungs, and those of the stomach. From
 all these circumstances it is pretty evident that
 intoxication from spirits is produced more by
 the direct action of the fluid upon the nerves of
 the latter organ, than by absorption.
  Mr. Brodie supposes that there is no absorp-
 tion whatever of alcohol,  and supports his views
 with a number of striking facts.*   This, how-


  *  The following are the grounds on which he supports
his doctrine. " 1. In experiments where animals have been
 killed by the injection  of spirits into the stomach, I have
found this organ to bear the marks of great inflammation,
but never any preternatural appearances whatever in the
brain.  2. The effects of spirits taken into the stomach, in
tlie last experiment, were so instantaneous, that it appears
impossible that absorption  should have taken place before
they were produced.  3. A person who is intoxicated fre-
quently becomes suddenly sober after vomiting.   4. In the
experiments which I have just related, I mixed tincture of
rhubarb with tlie spirits, knowing from the experiments of
Mr. Home and Mr. William Brande, that this (rhubarb)
when absorbed into the circulation, was readily separated
from the blood by the kidneys, and that very small quanti-
ties might be detected in the urine by the addition of potash;
                      H 2 
86
ever, is a length to which I cannot go.   I am
inclined to think that  though such absorption
is not necessary to produce  drunkenness,  it
generally takes place to a greater or lesser de-
gree; nor can I conceive any reason  why alco- n'
hoi may  not  be taken  into the  circulation as
well as  any other fluid.   My reasons for sup-
posing that  it  is absorbed, are the  following.
1. The blood, breath, and  perspiration of a con-
firmed drunkard differ from those of a sober
man; the former being darker, and the two
latter strongly impregnated with a  spirituous
odour. 2. The perspiration of the wine-drinker
is often of the hue of his favourite liquor: after
a4ebauch on Port,  Burgundy, or Claret, it is
not uncommon to see  the  shirt or sheets in
which he lies, tinted to a rosy colour by the
moisture which  exudes  from his body.  3.
Madder, mercury, and sulphur are received
into the circulation unchanged; the former dye-
ing the bones, and the  others exhaling through
the pores of the  skin, so as  to communicate
their peculiar odours to the person, and even
discolour coins and other metallic substances in
his pockets.  The first of these reasons is a
direct proof  of  absorption; the  second  shows
that as wine  is received into  the circulation,
and passes through it, alcohol may do the same;

but though I never failed to find urine in the bladder, I
never detected rhubarb in it.—Phil. Trans, of the Royal
Society of Lond. 1811, Part I. p. 178. 
87
and the third furnishes collateral evidence of
other agents exhibiting this phenomenon as well
as spirituous liquors.  The doctrine of absorp-
tion is  supported by  Dr. Trotter,* who con-
ceives that alcohol  de-oxygenizes the blood,
and causes it to give out  an unusual portion of
hydrogen  gas.   The quantity  of this gas in the
bodies of drunkards  is so great, that many have
attempted to explain from it  the circumstance
of spontaneous combustion, by which, it  is
alleged, the human  frame has been sometimes
destroyed,  by being burned to ashes.
* Essay on Drunkenness. 
CHAPTER  VII.
PHYSIOLOGY OF DRUNKENNESS.
  In administering medicines, the practitioner
has a natural desire to learn the means by which
they produce their effects upon the body. Thus,
he is not contented with knowing  that squill
acts  as a diuretic, and that mercury increases
the secretion of the bile. He inquires by  what
process they do  so; and  understands that the
first excites into increased action trie secretory
arteries of the  kidneys, and the last the secre-  t
tory veins of the liver.  In like manner, he does
not rest satisfied with the  trite knowledge that
wines, and  spirits,  and ales, produce intoxica*"
tion:  he  extends his  researches  beyond this
point, and is naturally anxious to ascertain by 
89
what peculiar action of the system these agents
give rise to so extraordinary an effect.
  All  the  agents of which  we have  spoken,
with the exception  of tobacco, whose action
from the first is decidedly sedative, operate part-
ly by stimulating the frame.   They cause the
heart to throb more vigorously, and the blood
to circulate freer, while, at the same time, they
exert a peculiar  action upon the nervous sys-
tem.  The nature of this action, it is probable,
will never be satisfactorily explained.   If mere
stimulation were all  that was wanted, drunken-
ness ought to be present in many cases where
it is never  met  with.   It, or more  properly
speaking, its symptoms, ought to exist  in in-
flammatory  fever, and  after violent  exercise,
such as running or hard walking.   Inebriating
agents, therefore, with few exceptions, have a
twofold action.   They both act by increasing
the  circulation, and by  influencing the nerves;
and the latter operation, there can be no doubt,
is the  more  important of the  two.   Having
stated this general fact, it  will be better to con-
sider the cause of each individual  symptom in
detail.
  I.  Vertig\.—This  is  partly produced by
the  ocular delusions under which the drunkard
labours, but it is principally owing to  other
causes; as it is actually greater when the eyes
are shut than when they are open—these causes,
by the exclusion of light, being unaccountably 
90
 increased. Vertigo, from intoxication, is far less
 liable to  produce sickness and vomiting than
 from any other cause;  and when  it does pro-
 duce them, it  is to a very inconsiderable de-
 gree.  These symptoms, in  ninety-nine cases
 out  of a  hundred, arise  from the disordered
 state of the stomach, and not, as we have else^
 where mentioned, from the accompanying gid-
 diness.   There are, indeed,  a  certain class of
 subjects who vomit  and become pale, as soon/
 as vertigo comes over  them, but such are few
 in number compared with  those  whose  sto-
 machs are totally unaffected  by this sensation.
 In swinging, smoking, sailing  at sea, or turn-^
4ng^ rapidly round, sickness  and vomiting are
 apt  to occur; and there seems no doubt that
 they proceed in a great measure from the ver-
 tigo brought on by these actions.  The giddi-J
 ness of drunkenness, therefore, as it very rare-'
 ly sickens,  must be  presumed  to  have some
 characters peculiar to itself.  In this, as well as
 in some other affections, it seems to be the con-
 sequence of a close sympathy between the brain
 and  nerves of the stomach; and whatever affects
 the  latter organ, or any other visjus strongly
 sympathizing with it, may bring it on equally
 with inebriating agents: calculi in the  ureters
 or biliary ducts are illustrations of this fact.  In
 intoxication, the  giddiness  is more strongly
 marked, because the powers  both of body and
 mind are temporarily impaired, and the senso- 
91
rium so disordered as to be unable to regulate
the conduct.
  A degree  of  vertigo may be produced by
loading the stomach  too rapidly and copiously
after a long fast.  Common food in this instance
amounts to a strong stimulus in consequence of
the state of the stomach, in which there was an
unnatural want of excitement.   This organ was
in a state of  torpor;  and a stimulus which, in
ordinary  circumstances, would  hardly  have
been felt, proves,  in reality,  highly exciting.
For the same reason, objects have an unnatural
luminousness when  a  person  is  suddenly
^brought from intense darkness to a brilliant
light.

  II.  Double  Vision.—The   double  vision,
which  occurs in drunkenness, may be  readily
accounted for by the  influence of increased cir-
culation in the brain  upon the nerves of sight.
Id phrenzy, and various fevers, the same  phe-
nomenon  occurs.  Every  nerve  is supplied
with vessels; and it is conceivable that  any
unusual impulse of blood into  the optics  may
so far affect  that pair as to derange their ac-
tions.   Whence, they convey false impressions
to the brain,  which is itself too much thrown
off its just equilibrium to remedy, even if  that
under  any circumstances were possible, the
distorted images of the retina.  The refraction
of light in the tears, which are secreted more 
92
copiously than usual during intoxication, may
also assist in multiplying objects to the eye.

  III. Staggering and Stammering. —These
symptoms are, in like manner, to be explained
from the disordered state of the brain and ner-
vous system.  When the origin of sensation is
affected, it is  impossible that parts whose ac-
tions depend upon it can perform  their func-
tions well.   The  nervous  fluid is probably
carried to the muscles in a broken and irregular
current, and the filaments which are scattered
over the body are  themselves directly  stunned
and paralyzed: hence, the insensibility  to pain,
and other external impressions.  This insensi-
bility extends  everywhere, even to the organs
of deglutition and speech.  The utterance is
thick and indistinct, indicating a loss of power
in the lingual nerves which give action to the
tongue; and the same want of energy seems to
prevail in the gustatory branches which give it
taste.

  IV. Heat and  Flushing.—These result
from the strong determination  of blood to the
surface of the body.  This reddens and tume-
fies the face and eyes, and excites an universal
glow of heat.  Blood is the cause of animal
heat, and the more it is determined to any part,
the greater is  the  quantity of caloric  evolved
therefrom. 
93
   V. Ringing in the Ears.—This is account-
 ed for by the generally increased action within
 the head, and  more particularly by the throb-
 bing of the internal carotid arteries which run
 in the immediate neighbourhood of the ears.

   VI.  Elevation of Spirits.—The  mental
 pleasure of intoxication is not easily explained
 on physiological principles.  We feel a delight
 in being rocked gently, in swinging on a chair,
 or in being tickled.   These undoubtedly act
 upon the nerves, but in what manner, it would
 be idle to attempt investigating.  Intoxicating
 agents no doubt do the same thing.  The men-
 tal manifestations  produced by  their  influence
rdepend almost entirely upon the nerves, and
 are, unlike the corporeal  ones,  in a great mea-
 sure independent of vascular excitement.  The
 power of exciting the feelings inherent in these
--.principles,  can only be accounted for by sup-
 posing a most  intimate relation to subsist be-
 tween the  body and  the mind.  The brain,
 through  the medium  of its nervous branches,
 is the source  of  all  this  excitement.  These
 branches receive  the  impressions and convey
 them to their fountain-head, whence they are
 showered like sparkling  rain-drops  over the
.,mind, in a thousand  fantastic  varieties.   No
,jbodily affection ever  influences the mind but
•through  the  remote  or proximate agency of
                       i 
94
 this organ.  It  sits enthroned in the citadel of
 thought,  and, though material itself, acts with
 wizard power both upon matter and spirit.  No
 other texture has the same pervading principle.
 If the lungs be diseased, we have expectoration
 and cough; if the  liver, jaundice or dropsy; if
 the stomach, indigestion; but when the brain is
 affected,  we  have not merely  many  bodily
 symptoms, but severe affections of the mind;
 nor are such affections ever produced by any
 organ  but through the agency  of  the brain.*
 It,  therefore, acts in a  double capacity upon
 the frame, being both the source of the corpo-
 real feelings, and of the mental manifestations.
Admitting this truth, there can be  little dif-
 ficulty in apprehending why intoxication pro-
 duces so  powerful a mental  influence.   This
 must proceed from a resistless  impulse  being
 given to  the  brain,  by virtue of the peculiar
 action of  inebriating agents upon the  nerves.
 That organ of the  mind  is  suddenly endowed
 with increased  energy.   Not only does the
 blood circulate through it more rapidly, but an

  * This fact, the phrenologists, with their usual ingenuity,
 have laid hold of;  and it is but  fair to confess, that the
 ground-work of their creed, which makes  the brain the
 source of the mind, cannot well be got over by their oppo-
 nents. If the mental powers depend in no degree upon
 physical structure,  how does it  happen that  any thing
 which affects the brain  affects the mind also? 
95
action, sui generis,  is given to its whole sub-
stance.   Mere increase  of circulation, as we
have  already stated, is  not sufficient:  there
must be some other principle at work upon its
texture;  and it  is this  principle, whatever it
may be, which is  the main cause of drunken-
ness.   At  first,  ebriety has a soothing effect,
and falls over the  spirit  like the hum of bees,
or the distant murmur of  a cascade.  Then to
these soft dreame of Elysium succeed a state of
maddening energy and excitement in the brain.
The thoughts which emanate from its prolific
tabernacle, are more fervid and original  than
ever—they rush out with  augmented copious-
ness, and sparkle over the understandingjiker
the aurora borealis,  or the eccentric scintilla-
tions  of light upon a  summer  cloud.  In  a
word, the organ is excited  to a high, but not a
diseased action, for this  is coupled with pain,
and, instead of pleasurable, produces afflicting
ideas.  But its energies, like those of any other
part, are apt to  be over-excited.   When this
takes" place, the balance  Is broken; the  mind
gets tumultuous  and disordered, and the ideas
inconsistent,  wavering,  and  absurd.  Then
come the torpor and  exhaustion  subsequent on
such excessive stimulus.  The person falls into
drowsiness or stupor, and his mind, as well as
his body, is followed by languor corresponding
to the previous excitation. 
                    96

  Such is a slight and unsatisfactory attempt to
elucidate some of the more prominent pheno-
mena of drunkenness.  Some  are  omitted  as
being too obvious to require explanation, and
others have been elsewhere cursorily accounted
for in different parts of the work. 
CHAPTER VIII.
METHOD OP CURING THE FIT OP BRUNKENNESS.
  I.  From  Liquors.—Generally speaking,
there is no remedy for  drunkenness equal to
vomiting.   The sooner the stomach is emptied
of its contents the better, and this may, in most
cases, be accomplished  by  drinking freely of
tepid water, and tickling the fauces. On more
obstinate occasions, powerful  emetics  will  be
necessary, and if even these fail, and dangerous
symptoms supervene, the stomach  pump, late-
ly invented by  Jukes, should be immediately
employed.  Cold applications to the head  are
likewise useful.  In all cases, the head ought to
be well elevated, and the neckcloth removed,
that there  may be no impediment to the circu-
lation.  Where there is total insensibility, where
                    i2 
98
the pulse is slow and full, and the pupils dilated,
the face flushed, and the breathing stertorous,
it becomes a question whether blooding might
be useful.  Darwin* and Trotter speak  dis-
couragingly of the practice.  As a general rule
I think  it is  bad; and  that many  persons  who
would have recovered, if left  to themselves,
have lost their lives  by  being prematurely bled.
In all cases it should be done  cautiously, and
not for a  considerable time.   Vomiting  and
other means  should  invariably  be first had re-
course to, and if they fail, and nature is unable
of her  own  power  to overcome the  stupor,
blooding may be tried.  In this respect, liquors
differ from opium, the insensibility from which
is benefited by abstraction of blood.
  There is one variety of drunkenness in which.
both blooding and cold are inadmissible.  This
is when a  person is struck  down, as it were,.
by drinking suddenly  a great  quantity of ar-
dent spirits.  Here he is overcome  by an in-
stantaneous stupor:  his countenance is ghastly j
and pale, his  pulse  feeble, and  his body cold.
While these  symptoms continue, there is no
remedy but vomiting.  When,  however, they
wear off, and are succeeded, as they usually are,
by flushing, heat, and general excitement, the
case  is  changed,  and must be  treated  as  any
other where such symptoms exist.
* Zoonomia. 
99
   We have already mentioned that the excite-
 ment of drunkenness is succeeded by universal
 languor.  In the first stage, the drunkard is full
 of energy, and capable of withstanding vigor-
 ously all external influences.  In the second,
 there is general torpor and exhaustion, and he
 is more than usually subject to every impres-
 sion, whether of cold or contagion.   Persons
 are often picked up half dead  in this second
 stage.  The stimulus of intoxication had enabled
 them to endure the chill of the atmosphere, but
 the succeeding weakness left them more sus-
 ceptible  than  before of its severity.   In this
 state the body will  not sustain any farther ab-
 straction of stimuli; and  blooding and cold—-^
 would be highly injurious.   Vomiting is here
 equally necessary, as in all other instances; but
 the person must be kept in a warm temperature,
 and cherished with light and nourishing food—
 with soups, if such can be procured, and even
 with negus, should the prostration of strength
 be very great.
  There is nothing which has so strong a ten-
 dency to dispel the effects of a debauch as hard
 exercise, especially if the air be cold. Aperients
and diaphoretics are also extremely useful for
the same purpose.
  For some days after drinking too much, the
food  ought to be light and unirritating, consist-
ing principally of vegetables.  Animal  food is 
100
 apt to heat the body, and dispose it to inflam-
 matory complaints.
   It may here be mentioned, though not with
 a view of recommending the practice, that the
 vegetable acids have  a  strong  effect  both in
 counteracting and removing drunkenness.  To
 illustrate this fact, the following circumstance
 may be mentioned.   About twenty years  ago,
 an English regiment was stationed in Glasgow,
 the men of which,  as is common  in  all regi-
 ments, became enamoured  of whiskey.   This
 liquor, to which  they gave the whimsical de-
 nomination of white ale, was new to them—
 being  nearly  unknown in England: and they
-soon  indulged in it to  such an extent, as to
 attract the  censure  of  their officers.   Being
 obliged to be at quarters by a  certain hour,
 they found out the plan of sobering themselvesi'
 by drinking large quantities of vinegar, perhaps
 a gill or two at a draught. This, except in very
 bad cases, had the desired  effect, and  enabled
 them to enter the barrack-court, or appear on
 parade, in a state of tolerable sobriety.   The
 povyer of the vegetable acids in resisting intoxi-
 cation is well shown in the case of cold  punch
 —a larger portion of which can be withstood
 than of either grog or toddy, even when the
 quantity of spirit is  precisely the same.*

  • In speaking of the treatment, it is necessary to guard
 against confounding other affections with drunkenness —
 " There 13 a species of delirium that often attends the ac- 
101
   II. From Opium.—When a dangerous quan-
tity of opium has been taken,  the treatment, in
the first instance, is the same as with regard to
spirits,  or any other intoxicating fluid.   Imme-
diate vomiting is to be attempted, and  for this
purpose it will be necessary to  give ten grains
of sulphate of copper, half a drachm of sulphate
of zinc, or five grains of tartar emetic.   Either
of these should be dissolved in a small quantity
of tepid water, and instantly swallowed.  When
vomiting has taken place, it should be  encour-
aged by warm drinks, till there is reason to be-
lieve that the stomach has been freed of poison.
Large quantities of a  strong  infusion of coffee
ought then to be given, or the vegetable acidly-
such as vinegar or lemon-juice, mixed with wa-
ter.   These serve  to mitigate the bad conse-
quences which  often  follow,  even after the
opium has been brought completely up.  If the
person  show signs of  apoplexy, more especially

cession of typhus fever, from contagion, that I have known
to be mistaken for ebriety.  Among seamen and soldiers,
whose habits of intoxication are common, it will sometimes
require nice discernment to decide; for the vacant stare in
the countenance, the look of idiotism, incoherent speech,
faultering voice, and tottering walk, are so alike in both
cases, that the naval and military surgeon ought at all times
to be very cautious how he gives up a man to punishment,
under these suspicious appearances. Nay, the circumstance
of his having come from a tavern, with even the  effluvium
of liquor about him, are signs not always to be trusted; for
these haunts of seamen and soldiers are often the sources
of infection."—Trotter. 
102
 if he be of a plethoric habit, the jugular vein,,
 or temporal  artery should  be opened, and a,
 considerable  quantity of blood taken away.j
 Every means must be used to  arouse him from
 stupor.   He must be moved about,  if possible,
 from room to room,  hartshorn applied to his
 nostrils, and  all  plans adopted to prevent him
 from sinking into lethargy.  For this purpose,
 camphor, assafcetida, or musk, might be admi-
 nistered with advantage.  In  cases where vc^
 miting cannot be brought about by the ordinary
 means, M. Orfila suggests  that  one  or  two
 grains of tartar emetic, dissolved in an ounce
 or two of water, might be injected  into  the
veins.  In desperate cases, Jukes's pump  may
 be tried.   Purgatives are latterly necessary.
  Many practitioners consider vinegar and the
 other vegetable acids antidotes to opium.  This
 opinion M. Orfila has  most satisfactorily shown
 to be erroneous.   In a series of well-conducted
 and  conclusive experiments made  by him, it
 appears that  the vegetable acids aggravate the
 symptoms of poisoning by opium, whenever
 they are  not vomited.  They  hurry  them on
 more rapidly, render  them  more violent,  pro-
 duce death at an early period,  and give rise to
 inflammation of  the stomach—an event which
 hardly ever occurs when they are not employ-
 ed.  These effects, it would appear, are partly
 produced by their power of dissolving opium,
 which they do better  than the mere unassisted 
103
fluids of the stomach; consequently the absorp-
tion is more  energetic.  The only time when
acids  can  be of use,  is after  the person has
brought up the poison by vomiting. They then
mitigate the subsequent symptoms, and pro-
mote the recovery; but if they be swallowed
before vomiting takes place, and if this act can-
not by any means  be  brought about, they ag-
gravate the disorder,  and  death ensues more
rapidly than if they had not been taken.
  Coffee has likewise a good effect when taken
after the opium is got off  the  stomach; but it
differs  from the acids  in this, that it does not,
under  any circumstances, increase the danger.
While the opium is still unremoved, the cofi>&-
may be considered merely inert; and it  is,
therefore,  a matter of indifference whether at
this time it be taken or not.  Afterwards, how-
ever, it produces the  same beneficial effects as
lemonade, tartaric acid, or vinegar.

  III.  From Tobacco.— If a person feel giddy
or languid from  the use of this luxury,  he
should lay himself down on his back, exposed
to a current of cool air.  Should this fail of re-
viving him, let him either swallow twenty or
thirty drops of hartshorn, mixed with a glass of
cold water, or an ounce of vinegar moderately
diluted.  Where tobacco has been received into
the stomach, so as  to produce dangerous symp-
toms, a powerful  emetic must immediately be 
104
given,  and vomiting  encouraged  by copious i
drinks, till the poison is brought up.  After
this, vinegar ought to be  freely exhibited, and
lethargy prevented by the external and internal
use of stimuli.   If apoplectic symptoms appear,
blooding must be had recourse to.  The same  '
rule applies here, with regard to acids, as in the
case of opium.  They should  never  be  given
till the  stomach is  thoroughly liberated of its
contents by previous vomiting.
   Accidents happen  oftener with tobacco than
is  commonly supposed.  Severe languor, retch-
ing, and convulsive attacks sometimes  ensue
from the application of ointment, made with
this plant, for the cure of ring-worm; and San-
teuil, the  celebrated French poet, lost his life
in consequence of having unknowingly drunk
a glass of wine, into which had been put some
Spanish snuff.

   IV. From Nitrous Oxide.—Though the in-
halation of this gas is seldom attended with any
risk, yet in very plethoric habits, there  might
be a determination of blood  to the head, suf-
ficient to produce apoplexy.  If a person, there-
fore, becomes, after the experiment, convulsed,
stupefied, and livid in the countenance, and if
these symptoms do  not soon wear  away, some
means must be adopted for their removal,  la
general, a free exposure to fresh air,  and dash-
ing cold water over the face, will be  quite suf- 
105
Mficient, but if the affection is so obstinate as to
^resist this plan, it will then  be necessary to
p-draw some blood from the arm, or, what is still
B[better, from the jugular vein.  When,  in deli-
 ' cate  subjects, hysteria and other nervous symp-
$ toms are produced,  blooding is not necessary;
'* all that is requisite to be done  being the appli-
| cation of cold water to the brow or temples, and
f of hartshorn to the nostrils.  In obstinate cases,
I twenty or  thirty drops of the latter  in a glass
  of water may be administered with advantage.
K 
CHAPTER IX.
PATHOLOGY OP DRUNKENNESS.
  The evil consequences of drinking, both in
a physical  and moral point of view, seem to
have been  known from the most remote an-
tiquity.   They are expressly mentioned  in
Scripture; nor can there be a doubt that the
Homeric fiction of the  companions of Ulysses
being turned into  swine by the enchanted cup
of Circe, plainly implied the bestial degradation
into  which men bring  themselves  by coming
under the dominion of so detestable a habit.
Having  mentioned these circumstances in fa-
vour of the accuracy of  ancient knowledge, we
shall simply proceed to detail the effects of
drunkenness, so far as the medical practitioner
is professionally interested in knowing them. 
107
   The moral consequence's belong more pro-
 perly to the legislator and divine, and do not
 require to be here considered.

   I.   State  of the Liver.—One of the most
 common  consequences of drunkenness is acute
, inflammation.  This may affect any organ, but
 its attacks are principally confined to the brain,
 the stomach, and the  liver.  It is unnecessary
 to enter into any detail of  its nature and treat-
 ment.  These are  precisely the same as when
 it proceeds from any other cause.  The  inflam-
 mation of drunkenness is, in a  great majority
 of cases, chronic; and the viscus which,  in nine,
 cases oat of ten, suffers is the liver.
   Liquors, from the earliest ages, have  been
 known to affect this organ.  Probably the story
 of Prometheus stealing fire from heaven and
 animating clay, alluded to the effects of wine
 upon the human body;  and the punishment of
 having his liver devoured by  a vulture, may
 be supposed to refer to the consequences which
 men draw upon themselves by over-indulgence
 —this organ becoming thereby highly diseased.
 Man is not the only animal so affected.  Swine
 which are fed on the refuse of breweries,  have
 their1 livers  enlarged  in  the  same manner.
 Their other viscera become also indurated, and
 their flesh so  tough, that, unless  killed early,
 they are unfit to be eaten.   Some fowl-dealers
 in London are said to mix gin with the  food of 
                          108

      the  birds, by which  means they are fattened,
      and  their livers swelled to a great size.   The
      French manage to enlarge this organ in geese,
      by piercing  it shortly  after the creatures are
      fledged.
        This is a viscus which, in confirmed topers,
      never escapes; and it withstands disease better
      than any other vital part, except, perhaps, the
      spleen.  Sometimes,  by a slow  chronic action,
      it is enlarged to double its usual size, and totally
      disorganized, and yet the person  suffers com-
      paratively little. The disease frequently arises,
      in tropical climates, from  warmth and  other
^^natural causes,  but an  excess in spirituous li-
      (Jtrors  is more frequently  the cause  than is
      generally imagined.
        The consequences which follow chronic in-
      flammation of the liver, are very extensive.
      The bile, in general, is not secreted in  due
      quantity or  quality,  consequently digestion is
      defective.  The bowels, from want of  thei!"
      usual  stimulus, become torpid.   The  person
      gets jaundiced,  his skin  becoming yellow, dry$
      and rough,  and the white  of his eyes  disced
      loured.  As the enlargement goes on,  the free
      passage of blood in  the veins is impeded, and
      their extremities throw out lymph: this'accu-
      mulating, forms dropsy, a  disease with which
      a great proportion of drunkards are ultimately
      more or less affected. 
109
  The jaundice of drunkenness is not an origi-
nal disease, but  merely a symptom of the one
under consideration.  A very slight  cause will
often bring it on; it is, consequently,  not al-
ways dangerous.  Dropsy is, for the  most part,
also symptomatic of diseased liver, but some-
times, more especially  in  dram-drinkers, it
arises from general debility of the system.  In
the former case, effusion always takes place in
the cavity of the abdomen.  In the latter, there
is general anasarca throughout the body, usual-
ly coupled with more or less topical affection.
In every instance, dropsy, whether general or
local, is a very  dangerous disease.

   II. State of the  Stomach,  <§*c—Like  the
liver, the stomach is more subject to chronic
than acute inflammation.  It is also apt to get
indurated,  from long continued, slow action
going on  within its  substance.   This  disease
is extremely insidious, frequently proceeding
great lengths before it is discovered.   The or-
gan is often thickened to half an inch, or even
an inch; and its different tunics  so  matted to-
gether  that they  cannot be separated.  The
pyloric orifice  becomes, in  many cases,  con-
tracted.   The cardiac may suffer the same dis-
organization, and so  may the oesophagus;  but
these are  less common, and,  it must be admit-
ted, more rapidly fatal.  When the stomach is
much thickened, it may sometimes be felt like
                     K 2 
110
a hard ball below the left ribs.   At this point
there is also a dull uneasy pain, which is  aug-
mented upon pressure.
  Indigestion or spasm  may arise from a mere
imperfect action of this organ, without any dis-  I
ease of its structure; but when organic derange-'
ment takes place, they are constant attendants.
In  the latter  case it is  extremely difficult for
any food to remain on the stomach; it is speedi-
ly vomited.  What little is retained undergoes
a painful fermentation, which produces sick-
ness  and heartburn.   There  is, at  the same
time, much obstinacy in  the  bowels, and the
body becomes emaciated.
^--This disease, though generally produced by
dissipation, originates  sometimes from  other
causes, and affects the soberest people.  When-
ever the stomach is neglected, when  acidity is
allowed to become habitual, or indigestible food
too much made use of,  the foundaflbn may be
laid  for  slow inflammation, terminating in
schirrus  and all its bad consequences.
  Vomiting of bilious matter in the mornings,
is a very common circumstance among all class-
es of drunkards.   But there is another kind of
vomiting much more  dangerous, and that is
when inflammation of the villous coat of the
stomach  takes place.   In such a  state there is
not much acute pain, but  rather a dull feeling
of uneasiness over the abdomen, attended with
the throwing up of a dark, crude matter, re- 
Ill
sembling coffee  grounds.   I  have seen  two
cases in which the vomiting stopped suddenly,
in consequence of metastasis to the  head.   In
these, the affection soon proved fatal, the per-
sons being seized with indistinctness of vision,
low  delirium,  and  general  want of muscular
power: the action of the kidneys was  also to-
tally suspended for three  days before death.
On examination, post mortem, there was effu-
sion  in the ventricles of the brain, besides ex-
tensive inflammation along the inner surface of
the upper portion of the alimentary canal.
  There  is nothing more  indicative  of health,
than a good appetite for breakfast; but confirm-
ed topers, from the depraved state of their sto-
machs, lose all relish for this meal.
  Persons of this description are generally of a
costive habit of body, but a debauch with those
who are constitutionally sober, is, for the most
part, followed by more or less diarrhoea.
  In the latter  stages of  a drunkard's life,
though he has still the  relish for  liquor as
strongly  as ever, he no longer  enjoys  his  for-
mer  power of withstanding it.   This proceeds
from general weakness of the system, and more
particularly of  the stomach.  This organ gets
debilitated, and soon gives way, while  the per-
son  is intoxicated much easier, and often vo-
mits what he  had swallowed.   His  appetite
likewise  fails; and to restore it, he has recourse
to various bitters,  which only aggravate the 
112
matter, especially  as  they are  in  most  cases
taken under the medium of ardent spirits.  Bit-
ters are often dangerous remedies.  When used
moderately,  and  in cases of weak  digestion
from  natural  causes, they frequently produce
the best effects; but a long continuance of them
is invariably  injurious.   There is a narcotic
principle residing in most bitters, which physi-
cians have too  much overlooked.   It destroys
the sensibility  of  the  stomach, determines  to
the head,  and  predisposes to  apoplexy  and
palsy.   This was the effect of the famous Port-
land Powder,* so  celebrated many years ago
for the cure of gout; and similar consequences
will, in the long-run, follow bitters as they are
commonly administered.  Persons  addicted  to
intemperance,  have  an  inordinate liking for
these substances; let them be ever so  nauseous,
they are swallowed greedily, especially if dis-
solved  in  spirits.   Their fondness  for  purl,
herb-ale, and other pernicious morning drinks,
is equally striking.
   There is nothing more characteristic of a
tippler  than  an indifference to  tea, and beve-


  • The Portland Powder consisted of  equal parts of the
roots of round birthwort and gentian, of the leaves of ger-
mander and  ground pine,  and  of the  tops of the lesser
centaury, all dried.  Drs. Cullen, Darwin, and Murray of
Gottingen, with many o^ier eminent physicians, bear tes.
timony to the pernicious effects of this compound. 
113
rages  of a like nature.   When a woman ex-
hibits this quality, we may reasonably suspect
her of indulging in liquor.  If drunkards par-
take of tea, they usually saturate it largely with
ardent spirits.  The unadulterated fluid is too
weak a  stimulus for their unnatural appetites.

  III. State of the Brain.—Inflammation of
this organ is often a  consequence of intempe-
rance.  It may follow immediately  after a de-
bauch, or it may arise secondarily from an ex-
cess of irritation being  applied to  the body,
during the stage of debility.  Even an abstrac-
tion of stimulus, as by applying too  much cold
to  the  head,  may bring it  on in  this latter
state.
• Dr. Armstrong, in his lectures, speaks of a
dironic inflammation  of the brain and its mem-
branes, proceeding, among other causes, from
the free use of strong wines and liquors.   Ac-
cording to him, it is much more common after,
than  before, forty years of age, although he has
seen  several instances occurring in young per-
sons.   The brain gets diseased, the diameter of
the vessels being diminished, while  their coats
are thickened and less transparent than usual.
In  some places they swell  out and assume a
varicose appearance.   The organ itself has no
longer  the  same  delicate and elastic texture,
becoming either unnaturally hard, or of a mor-
 bid softness.   Slight effusion in the  various ca- 
114
vities are apt to take place.   Under these cir-
cumstances, there is a strong risk of apoplexy!.
To this structure  is to be ascribed  the  mental
debasement, the loss of memory, and gradual
extinction  of  the  intellectual powers.   I be-
lieve that the brains of all confirmed drunkard!
exhibit more or less of the above appearances. '

  IV.  State of the Blood and Breath. —The
blood of a professed drunkard, as already statedj
differs from that of a sober  man.   It is more
dark, and approaches to the character of venous;
The ruddy tint of those carbuncles which are
apt to form upon the face is no proof to the
contrary, as the blood which supplies them is
crimsoned by exposure to the air, on the same
principle as that  by  which  the  blood  in the
pulmonary arteries receives  purification by the
process of breathing.   The  blood of a malt li-
quor drinker is not merely darker, but also more
thick and sizy than in other cases, owing, no
doubt, to the very nutritious nature  of his habi-
tual beverage.
  The breath of a drunkard has always  a  spt-
rituous odour.  This is partly owing  to the
state of the stomach, which  communicates the
flavour of its customary contents to respiration?
and partly also, there can be  little doubt, to the
absorption of the  liquor by the blood, through
the medium of the lacteals. 
115
  V.  State of the Perspiration.—The perspi-
ration of a confirmed  drunkard,  has often  a
strong spirituous odour.  I have met with two
instances, the  one in a Claret, the other in a
Port drinker, in which the moisture which ex-
uded from  their bodies had a ruddy complex-
ion, similar to that of the  wine  on which they
had committed their debauch.

  VI. State of the Eyes, fyc.—The eyes may
be affected with acute or chronic inflammation.
Almost all drunkards have the latter more or
less.  Their eyes are red and watery, and have
an expression so  peculiar, that the  cause can
never be mistaken.   This, and a  certain want
of firmness about the  lips, which are loose,
gross, and  sensual,  betray at once the toper.
Drunkenness impairs vision.  The delicacy of
the retina  is probable  affected; and it is evi-
dent, that, from long continued inflammation,
the tunica adnata  which covers the cornea must
lose its original clearness and transparency.
  Pleurisy often arises in drunkards from their
remaining out in  the open air, exposed to cold
and damp.  Inflammation of the  intestines, of
the kidneys, of the bladder, &c.  is also liable
to occur,  both from general excitement, and
            itation of these organs.   Rheuma-
            traced to the  neglect  and exposure
of a fit of. drunkenness.

    •
particular in
tisrri is often 
                      116

  Most drunkards have a constant tenderness
and redness of the nostrils.  This,  I conceive,
arises from  the  state of the stomach and oeso-
phagus. The same membrane which lines them
is prolonged upwards  to the nose and mouth,
and carries thus far its  irritability.
  There is no organ which so  rapidly betrays
the Bacchanalian  propensities of its  owner as
the nose.   It not only becomes red and fiery,
like that of Bardolph,* but acquires a general
increase  of size—displaying upon  its surface
various small pimples, either wholly of a deep
crimson hue, or tipped with yellow, in conse-
quence  of an accumulation  of viscid matter
  • " Falstaff. Thou art our admiral: thou bearest the Ian-
thorn in the poop; but 'tis in the nose of thee: thou art the
knight of the burning lamp.
  "Bardolph. Why, Sir John, my face  does  you no
harm.
  "Falstaff. No, I'll be sworn!  I make as good use of it
as many a man doth of a death's head or a memento  mori.
I never see thy face but I think of hell-fire."----" When
thou rann'st up Gads-hill in the night to catch my horse,
if I did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus, at a
ball of wildfire, there's no purchase in money.  O! thou
art a perpetual triumph—an everlasting bonfire light: thou
hast saved me a thousand marks in  links and  torches,
walking with me in the night  betwixt tavern and tavern;
but the Sack thou hast drunk  me would have bought me
lights as good cheap, at the dearest chandler's in  Europe.
I have maintained that salamander of yours with  fire any
time this two and thirty years—heaven reward me for it!" 
117
 within them.  The rest of the face often pre-
 sents the same carbuncled appearances.

   VII.  Gout.—Gout is the offspring of glut-
 tony, drunkenness, or sensuality, or of them all
 put together.  It occurs most frequently with
 the wine-bibber.   A very slight cause may
 bring it on when hereditary predisposition  ex-
 ists;  but in  other  circumstances considerable
 excess will be required  before it makes its  ap-
 pearance.  It is one of  the most afflicting con-
 sequences of intemperance, and seems to have
 been known as such from an early age—men-
 tion being made of it by Hippocrates, Aretaeus,
 and Galen.   Among the Roman ladies, gout
 was very prevalent, during the latter times of
 the empire; and, at the present day, there  are
 few noblemen who have it not to hand  down
 to  their offspring  as a portion  of  their heri-
itage.

   VIII. Tremors.—A general tremor is an at-
 tendant upon almost all drunkards.   This pro-
 ceeds  from  nervous  irritability.  Even  those
 who are habitually temperate, have  a quiver-
 ing in their hands next morning, if they indulge
 overnight in a debauch.   While it lasts, a per-
 son cannot  hold any thing  without  shaking,
 neither can he write steadily.  Among those
 who have long devoted  themselves to the mys-
                     L 
118
teries of Silenus, this amounts to a species of
palsy, affecting the whole body,  and even the
lips, with a sort  of  paralytic  trembling.  On
awaking from sleep,  they frequently feel it so
strongly, as to seem  in the cold fit of  an ague,
being neither able to walk steadily,  nor articu-
late  distinctly.   It is singular, that the very
cause of this distemper should be employed for
its cure.  When the confirmed drunkard awakes
with tremor, he immediately swallows a dram:
the  most violent shaking  is quieted  by this
means.  The opium-eater has  recourse  to the
same method: to remove the agitation produced
by one dose of opium, he takes another.   This,
in both cases, is only adding fuel to  the fire,
the  tremors  coming on at shorter intervals,
and  larger doses being required for  their re-
moval.
  Drunkards are more  subject than any other
class of people to apoplexy and palsy.

  IX.  Palpitation of the Heart.—This is a
very distressing consequence of drunkenness,
producing difficult breathing, and such a deter-
mination to the head as often  brings on giddi-
ness.  Drunkards are apt to feel it as they step
out  of bed, and the vertigo is frequently so
great as to make them  stumble.   There are
some sober persons who are much annoyed by
this affection.  In them  it may arise from spas-
modic action  of the fibres of the heart, nervous 
119
irritability, or organic disease, such an aneu-
rism or angina pectoris.

  X.  Hysteria.—Female drunkards  are very
subject to hysterical affections.  There is a de-
licacy of fibre in women, and a susceptibility of
mind, which  make them feel more acutely than
the other sex all  external influences.   Hence
their  whole  system  is often violently affected
with hysterics  and other varieties of  nervous
weakness.  These  affections  are not always
traced to their true cause, which is often neither
more nor less  than  dram-drinking.  When  a
woman's nose becomes crimsoned at the point,
her eyes somewhat red, and more watery than
before, and her lips fuller and less firm and in-
tellectual in  their expression, we  may suspect
that something wrong is going on.

  XI.  Epilepsy.—Drunkenness may bring on
epilepsy, or falling-sickness, and may excite it
into action in those who have the disease from
other causes.  Many persons cannot get slightly
intoxicated without having an epileptic or other
convulsive attack.  These fits generally arise in
the early stages, before drunkenness has got to
a height.  If they do not occur early, the in-
dividual will probably escape them altogether
for the time.

   XII. Emaciation.—Emaciation is peculiar- 
120
 ly  characteristic  of the  spirit-drinker.   Ho
 wears away, before his time, into the "lean
 and slippered pantaloon" spoken of by Shak-
 speare in his "Stages of  Human Life."  All
 drunkards, however, if they live long enough,
 become emaciated.   The  eyes get hollow, the
 cheeks fall  in,  and wrinkles soon furrow the
 countenance with the marks of age.  The  fat
 is absorbed  from  every part, and  the rounded
 plumpness which formerly characterized the
 body soon wears away.   The whole form gets
 lank and  debilitated.   There is a want of due
 warmth, and the hand is  usually covered with
 a chill clammy  perspiration.
  From the general defect of vital  power in
 the system, the children of drunkards are nei-
 ther numerous nor healthy.  They are  usually
 puny and  emaciated, and more than ordinarily
 liable to inherit all the diseases of their parents.
 Their intellect is also, in most cases, below the
 general standard.

  XIII.  Corpulency.—Malt liquor and wine
 drinkers  are, for -the most part,  corpulent, a
 circumstance which rarely attends the spirit
drinker, unless  he be, at the same time, a bon
vivant.  Both wines and malt liquors are  more
 nourishing than spirits.  Under their use, the
 blood becomes, as it were, enriched,  and  an
 universal deposition of fat  takes place through- 
121
out the system.  The omentum and muscles of
the belly are, in a particular manner, loaded
with this secretion; whence the abdominal pro-
tuberance so remarkable in persons who in-
dulge themselves in wine and ales.  As the ab-
domen is the part which becomes most enlarged,
so is it that which longest retains its enlarge-
ment.  It seldom parts with it, indeed, even in
the last stages, when the rest of the body is in
a state of emaciation.  There can be no  doubt
that the parts which first lose their corpulency
are the lower extremities.   Nothing is  more
common than to see a pair of  spindle-shanks
tottering under the weight of an enormous cor-
poration,  to which they seem  attached  more
like artificial  appendages, than natural  mem-
bers.  The next parts which give way are the
shoulders.   They fall flat, and  lose their for-
mer firmness and  rotundity  of organization.
After  this, the whole  body becomes  loose,
flabby, and inelastic; and five years do as much
to the constitution as  fifteen would have done
under a  system of strict temperance and so-
briety.  The worst  symptom that can befal a
corpulent man,  is the decline of his lower ex-
tremities.*  So long as they continue firm, and


  * This circumstance has not escaped the observation of
Shakspeare.—" Chief Justice.  Do you set down your name
in the scroll of youth, that  are written down old, with all
L2 
122
correspond with the rest  of the  body, it  is a
proof that there is still vigour remaining; but
when  they gradually  get  attenuated,  while
other parts retain their  original fulness, there
can be no sign more  sure  that his constitution
is breaking down, and that he will never again
enjoy his wonted strength.

  XIV.  Premature Old  Jlgc.—Drunkenness
has a dreadful effect  in  anticipating the effects
of age.   It causes time  to pace on with giant
strides—chases youth from the constitution of
its victims—and clothes them prematurely with
the gray garniture of years.   How often do we
see  the sunken eye, the shrivelled cheek, the
feeble, tottering step, and hoary  hpad, in men
who have scarcely entered into the autumn of
their existence.  To witness this  distressing
picture, we have only to walk out early in the
mornings, and  see those gaunt, melancholy
shadows of mortality, betaking themselves to
the gin-shops, as to the altar of some dreadful
demon; and quaffing the poisoned cup to his ho-


the  characters of age?  Have you not a moist eye, a dry
hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, an
increasing belly?  Is not your voice broken, your wind short,
your chin double, your wit single, and every part about
you  blasted with antiquity; and will you  yet call yourself
young>  Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!" 
123
nour, as the Carthaginians propitiated the deity
of their worship, by flinging their children into
the fire which burned within his brazen image.
Most of these unhappy persons are young, or
middle-aged men;  and though some drunkards
attain a green old age,' they are few in number
compared with those who sink untimely into
the grave, ere the days of their youth have well
passed by.*   Nothing is more common than to
see a man of fifty,  as  hoary, emaciated, and
wrinkled, as if he stood on the borders of four-
score.

  XV.  Ulcers.—Ulcers often break out on the
bodies of drunkards.  Sometimes they are fiery
and irritable, but in general they possess an in-
dolent character.  Of whatever kind they may
be, they are always aggravated in such consti-
tutions.  A slight cause gives rise to them; and
a cut or bruise which, in  health, would have


  * "Let nobody tell  me that there are numbers who,
though they live most irregularly, attain, in health and spi-
rits, those remote periods of life attained by the most sober;
for this argument being grounded on a case full of uncer-
tainty and hazard, and which, besides, so seldom occurs as
to look more like a miracle than the work of nature, men
should not suffer themselves to be thereby  persuaded to
live irregularly, nature having been  too liberal to those
who did so without suffering by it; a favour which very
few have any right to expect."— Cornaro on  Health. 
124
healed in a few days, frequently degenerates
into a foul, sloughy  sore.  When  drunkards
are affected with  scrofula, scurvy, or any cu-
taneous disease whatever,  they always, caeteris
paribus, suffer more than  other people.

  XVI. Melancholy.—Though drunkards over
their cups are the happiest of mankind, yet, in
their solitary hours, they are the most wretch-
ed.  Gnawing care, heightened perhaps by re-
morse,  preys upon their conscience.  While
sober, they are distressed both in body and
mind, and fly to  the bowl to drown their mi-
sery  in oblivion.  Those,  especially,  whom
hard  fate drove to  this desperate remedy, feel
the pangs of low spirits with seven-fold force.
The weapon they employ to drive away care is
turned upon themselves.  Every  time it is used,
it becomes  less capable of scaring the fiend of
melancholy, and more effectual  in wounding
him that uses it.
   All drunkards are apt to become peevish and
discontented with the world.  They turn ene-
mies to the established order of things, and, in-
stead of looking to themselves, absurdly blame
the government as the origin of their misfor-,
tunes. 
125
  XVIL  Madness.*—This terrible infliction
often proceeds from drunkenness. When there
is hereditary  disposition, indulgence in liquor
is  more apt to call it into action  than when
there is none.  The mind and body act reci-
procally upon one another; and when the one
is injured, the other must  suffer more or less.
In intemperance,  the structure of the  brain is
no longer the  same as in health; and the mind,
that immortal part  of  man, whose  manifesta-
tions depend  upon  this organ, suffers  a corre-
sponding injury.
  Intoxication may affect  the mind  in two
ways.   A person, after excessive indulgence in
liquor, may be seized with delirium, and run
into a state of violent outrage and madness. In
this case  the  disease comes suddenly  on: the
man is  fierce  and intractable, and  requires a
strait-jacket to keep him in order.  Some never
get drunk without being insanely outrageous:
they attack, without distinction, all who come
fn their way,  foam  at  the mouth, and lose all
sense of danger.  This fit  either goes off in a

  •  " The excessive use of  spirituous liquors among the
lower ranks of the people,  is justly considered a great
cause of that deplorable evil insanity, to which they are
liable, as well as to those bilious and dropsical complaints,
formerly so little  known."—Sir John Sinclair 
126
   few  hours, or  degenerates into a  confirmed
   attack of lunacy.   More generally, however,
   the madness of intoxication is of another  cha-
   racter, partaking of the nature of idiotism, into
   which state, the mind resolves itself, in conse-
   quence of a long-continued falling off in the in-
   tellectual powers.
     Drunkenness, according to the  reports  of
   Bethlehem Hospital, and other similar institu-
   tions  for the insane, is one of the most common
   causes of lunacy; and there  are few but must
   have witnessed the wreck of the most power-
   ful minds, by this destructive habit.  It has a
   more  deplorable effect upon  posterity than
   any  other  practice, for  it entails  not only
/  bodily disease  upon  the  innocent offspring,
   but also  the  more afflicting diseases of  the
   mind.*

     XVIII.  Delirium  Tremens.—Both   the

     * It has been considered unnecessary to enter into any
   detail of the nature and treatment of the foregoing disease*,
   because they may originate from many other causes besidet
   drunkenness; and when they do arise from this source, they
   acquire a peculiarity of character. Their treatment is also
   precisely the same as in ordinary cases—it bein^ alwayi
   understood,  that tlie bad  habit which  brought them on
   must be abandoned before any good can result from medi-
   cine.   The disease, however, which follows is  different,
   and requires particular consideration. 
127
symptoms and treatment of this affection re-
quire  to be mentioned, because,  unlike  the
diseases already enumerated, it originates solely
in the excessive use of stimulating liquors, and
is cured in a manner peculiar to itself.
  Delirium tremens seldom takes place except
in confirmed drunkards.  It  occurs  generally
after an excessive fit of drinking which has con-
tinued for some days without intermission; but
I have  also known it to arise from a person
having been too suddenly deprived of the sti-
mulus to which he had been long accustomed.
A medical friend lately mentioned to me the
case of one of his patients who fractured his
leg, and who,  in consequence of the abstemi-
ousness requisite in such  a  case, was  seized
with this disease  four days after the accident.
Delirium tremens comes on with lassitude, loss
of appetite, and frequent exacerbations of cold.
The pulse is weak and  quick, and  the body
covered with  a chilly moisture.  The counte-
nance is pale,  there are  usually tremors of the
limbs, anxiety,  and a  total  disrelish  for the
common amusements of life.  Then  succeed
retching, vomiting, and  much oppression at the
pit of  the stomach.  When the  person  sleeps,
which is  but  seldom, he frequently starts  in
the  utmost terror,  having  his  imagination
haunted by frightful  dreams.   To  the  first 
128
coldness, glows of heat succeed, and the slight-
est renewed  agitation of body or mind, sends
out a profuse perspiration.  The tongue is dry
and furred: every object appears unnatural and
hideous.   There is a constant  dread of being
haunted by spectres.  Black or luminous bodies
seem to float  before the person: he conceives
that vermin and all sorts of impure things are
crawling upon  him, and is constantly endea-
vouring to pick them off.  His ideas are wholly
confined  to  himself and  his  own affairs, of
which  he entertains the most  disordered no-
tions.  He imagines that he  is  away  from
home, forgets those who are around him, and
is  irritated beyond measure  by the slightest
contradiction.  Calculations,  buildings,   and
other fantastic schemes often occupy his mind;
and a belief that every person  is confederated
to ruin  him, is  commonly entertained.   This
state generally lasts from four to ten days, and
goes off after a refreshing sleep;  but sometimes,
either from the original violence of the disease
or from  improper treatment,  it proves  fatal.
There  is  another termination which  the  com-
plaint sometimes, though rarely, assumes.  It
may run into madness or confirmed idiotism
Indeed, when it continues much beyond the
time mentioned, there is  danger of the  mind
becoming permanently alienated.
y 
129
   Subsultus, low delirium, very cold skin, con-
tracted pupil,  strabismus,  short  intermitting
pulse, and frequent vomiting, are indications of
great danger.
   This disease is to be  distinguished  from ty-
phus, in  not being contagious, and in having
neither the petechia? nor cadaverous smell that
often occur in this variety of fever.  The deli-
rium is  not so impetuous in its attack, and
there is, from  the beginning, less prostration
of strength.
   From phrenitis it is readily distinguishable,
by being attended with a more moderate degree
of fever, by the want of  turgescency, redness
of the eyes,  and intolerance of light.  The face
likewise, instead  of being flushed, is pale, and
the pulse weak.
   It is  distinguished from  mania by being with-
out the wild, furious glassy eye of persons la-
bouring under that disorder.
   "Those patients who have been driven  to
intoxication from some  great affliction, are ge-
nerally in imminent danger; for, during the
progress of the complaint, their raving inces-
santly turns  upon the recent calamity, and pro-
duces an  irritation and exhaustion most difficult
to be counteracted.   But confirmed drunkards,
who have previously laboured under chronic
hepatitis,  or some  similar  organic affection,
perhaps stand the worst chance; at least I have
                     M 
130
seen two subjects of this kind who sank rapidly
under the disease."*
  In treating  this disease, particular attention
must be paid to the constitution of the patient.
As  a general rule, blooding is very prejudicial.
The only cases in which it is admissible, are in
plethoric  subjects, especially  when there  is
much local  affection.   Even here it must be
used  in  moderation,  and  only at  the  com-
mencement of the complaint.   In lik manner,
purgatives cannot be employed except at the
beginning:  nor  at any period can they be car-
ried to a great extent.   As  the  bowels are, in
most cases,  in extreme disorder, and the eva-
cuations  black and viscid, some smart physic
should be  given early;  but when the  disease
has proceeded any length, the less we have to
do with such medicines the better.  As soon as
the bowels have been  opened, a quantity of
tepid water strongly  impregnated  with  salt,
should be dashed over the body, and the per-
son immediately thereafter well dried and put
to bed.   Laudanum should then be administer-
ed  in doses of from forty to sixty  drops, ac-
cording  to  circumstances, and  repeated every

  *  Armstrong's  Practical Illustrations of Typhus Fever,
&c. a work to which I am indebted for some valuable hints,
and to which the  reader is referred for farther information
on Delirium Tremens. 
131
now and then  till  sleep  be procured.  The
great object of the treatment is to sooth the
apprehensions of the patient, and procure him
rest.  A moderate quantity  of  wine will  be
necessary, especially if he has been a confirmed
drinker, and  labours under  much weakness.
The principal means, indeed,  after purging has
been carried to its due extent, are wine, opium,
and tepid effusion: the latter maybe tried two,
three, or four times in the twenty-four hours,
as occasion requires.  The mind is, at the same
time, to be soothed in the gentlest manner, the
whimsical ideas of the patient to be humoured,
and his  fancies indulged as  far as possible. All
kinds of restraint or contradiction are  most
hurtful.   Some recommend  blisters to the head,
but these are, in every case, injurious.

   Such are the principal diseases brought on by
drunkenness.  There  are still  several others
which have not been enumerated—nor is  there
any  affection incident to either the body  or
mind, which this vice does not aggravate into
double activity.  The number of persons who
die in consequence of complaints so produced,
is  much greater than unprofessional people
imagine. This fact is well  known to  medical
men, who are aware  that  many  of the  cases
they are called  upon to attend,  originate  in
liquor, although  very often the circumstance is 
132
totally unknown  either  to  the patient  or his
friends.  This is particularly the case with re-
gard to affections of the liver,  stomach, and
other viscera concerned in digestion. 
CHAPTER X.
SLEEP OF DRUNKARDS.
  The drunkard  seldom knows the delicious
and refreshing slumbers of the temperate man.
He is restless, and tosses in bed for an hour or
two before falling asleep.  Even^hen his rest
is  not comfortable.   He  awakes frequently
during the night, and each time his mouth is
dry, his  skin  parched, and  his head, for the
most part, painful and throbbing. These symp-
toms  from the irritable state of his constitution,
occur even when he goes soberly to bed; but
if he lie down heated with liquor, he feels them
with  double force.   Most  persons  who  fall
asleep in a state of  intoxication, have  much
    r              m2 
134
headach,  exhaustion, and  general fever, on
awaking.  Some constitutions are lulled to rest
by  liquors, and others  rendered excessively
restless; but the first arc no gainers by the dif-
ference, as they suffer abundantly afterwards.
Phlegmatic drunkards drop into slumber more
readily than the others: their sleep is, in reality,
a sort of apoplectic stupor.

  I. Dreams.—Dreams may be readily sup-
posed to be common, from the deranged mani-
festations  of the brain which occur in intoxi-
cation.  They are usually of a painful nature,
and leave  a gloomy impression upon the mind.
In general, they are less palpable to the under-
standing than those which occur in soberness.
They come like painful  grotesque conceptions
across the imagination; and though this faculty
can embody nothing into shape, meaning, or
consistence, it is yet haunted with melancholy
ideas. These visions depend much on the men-
tal constitution of the person, and are  modified
by his habitual  tone  of  thinking.   It is, how-
ever, to be remarked,  that while the waking
thoughts of the drunkard are full of sprightly
images, those  of his sleep are usually tinged
with a shade of perplexing melancholy.

  II.  Nightmare.—Drunkards  are subject to
nightmare.  There are many  persons, whether 
135
sober or dissipated, who cannot lie long on their
backs without an attack of this distressing af-
fection.   It seldom, indeed, comes on, except
in this posture.   It  is commonly supposed to
occur only when  the sleep is unusually pro-
found.  Many observations have convinced me
that this opinion is erroneous, and  that it may
take  place when we are but half asleep.   Dr.
Darwin  says, that on awaking from nightmare,
he has observed that his pulse was not accele-
rated; and he is disposed to think, contrary to
the general belief, that there is no laboriousness
of respiration.   Whether this is correct, I am
not prepared  to say,  but I have remarked, that,
whatever may have been the state of breathing
and pulsation during the fit, both are affected on
coming out of it.  The heart, on the relief from
terror, beats  quickly, and  the breathing is in-
variably hurried.
  Physiologists have generally imputed incubus
to mechanical compression upon the diaphragm
from a full stomach.  This, probably, is very
often the real cause,  for we find, that after  eat-
ing a hearty  supper, we are more disposed to
it than at  other times.   The  blood, in conse-
quence of the full expansion of the lungs being
prevented,  accumulates in the right cavities of
the heart.   These circumstances naturally pro-
duce a degree of oppression, and would lead us
to infer, contrary to the author of the Zoonomia, 
136
that, in many cases at least, the breathing must
be laborious.   There  are, however,  I  am con-
vinced, examples of nightmare which are refer*
rible  to  other causes than  mere mechanical
compression of the lungs.   It may certainly be
brought on by sympathetic connexion between
the  stomach and  brain.   Such  instances we
sometimes meet with in  those who  are subject
to chronic gastritis.
   Drunkards are more afflicted than  other peo-
ple with  this disorder, in so far as they are
equally subject to all  the  ordinary causes, and
liable to others, from  which  sober  people are
exempted.  Intoxication is fertile in producing
reveries  and dreams, those playthings of the
fancy;  and it may  also give  rise to  such a dis-
tortion of idea, as to call up incubus, and all its
frightful accompaniments.*


  • The following very ingenious theory of  nightmare, is
given in the ninth number of the Medical Adviser:—" It is
a suspension of power in the muscles of inspiration: the
weight, the want of breathing, and the sense  of suffocation
prove this; and a still greater proof is, that after the sufferer
can speak only one syllable, the paroxysm is at an end. The
word cannot be spoken  without breath—breath cannot
come out of the lungs until it is brought in, nor brought in
without the action of the  muscles of the breast and ribi.
Nothing can be more simple than the cause—it is the tem-
porary paralysis of the pectoral muscles, through the me-
dium of the nerves which supply them with feeling.  What
is the remote cause, or the cause of  this  suspension of
power, is not so easily defined.  It may be from contraction 
137
  III. Sleep-walking.—Somnambulism is an-
other affection to which drunkards are more
liable than their neighbours. I apprehend that,
in general, the slumber must be very profound
when it takes place; but a  person may exhibit
it when only half asleep, if his mind is partially
stupified by liquor.  The phrenologists account
ingeniously  for  sleep-walking,  by  supposing
that some of the organs are  quiescent while
others are in a state of activity,   Drunkards,
even when consciousness is  not quite abolished,
frequently leave their  beds  and walk about the
room.   They know  perfectly  well what they
are  about, and  recollect it afterwards, but  if
questioned, either at the moment or at any fu-
ture period, they are totally unable to give any
reason for  their  conduct.   Sometimes,  after
getting up, they stand  a little time and endea-
vour to account for  rising,  then go again deli-
berately  to bed.   There is often, in the beha-
viour of these individuals, a strange mixture of
folly and  rationality.   Persons half tipsy have
been known to arise and go  out of doors in their
night-dress, being all the while sensible of what

in some of the great pulmonary vessels, or it may be affected
in the course of tlie pectoral nerves through the brain, or
through sympathy of the nerves  of the stomach, or liver
and spleen.   The latter organs are decidedly interested in
producing the disease, for  it is always accompanied with
derangement of them." 
138
they were doing, and aware of its absurdity.
The drunken somnambulism  has not alwayi
this character.  Sometimes the person is in a
profound slumber, and has no consciousness of
what he does.  From drinking, the affection ia
always more dangerous  than  from any  other
cause, as the muscles have  no  longer their for-
mer strength, and are unable to support the per-
son in  his  hazardous  expeditions.  If he gets
upon a house-top, he does not balance himself
properly, from giddiness;  he  is  consequently
liable to  falls and accidents of every kind.   It
is considered, with justice, dangerous to awaken
a sleep-walker.  In a drunken fit, there is less
risk than under other circumstances, the mind
being so  far confused, by intoxication, as to be,
in some measure, insensible to the shock.
  In this affection, the eyes are often, perhaps
generally, open, and communicate impressions
to the mind. The ears, likewise, are not always
impervious to sounds,  for a sleep-walker, when
spoken to, will sometimes answer rationally.
It appears that there is, in this state,  a certain
connexion  between the  body and the mind.
The principal fault lies in the judgment, which
exercises no power over the will.  Hence, som-
nambulists get into  the most  hazardous situa-
tions, from want of understanding to check
the blind impulses of instinct  and  volition.
Courage is not, with them, an abstract quality, 
139
but proceeds, as in  maniacs, from an ignorance
of danger.*

  * For farther information on sleep, the reader is referred
to Darwin's Zoonomia, Richerand's Physiology, Walker's
Treatise on Incubus, and Bond's Essay on the same. 
CHAPTER XI.
SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION OF DRUNKARDS.
  Whether such a quantity of hydrogen may
accumulate in the bodies of drunkards as to
sustain  combustion, I  profess myself  totally
unable to determine.  This subject is, indeed,
one which has never been satisfactorily investi-
gated; and, notwithstanding the cases brought
forward in support of the doctrine, the general
opinion seems to be, that the whole is fable, or
at least so  much involved in obscurity as to af-
ford no just grounds for belief.  The principal
information on this point, is in the Journal  de
Physique, in  an article  by Pierre Aime Lair, a
copy of which was published in the sixth vo-
lume of the Philosophical Transactions, by Mr.
Alexander Tilloch.  A number of  cases  are 
141
 there given; and it is not a little singular that
 the whole of them are those of women in ad-
 vanced  life.  WThen we consider  that writers
 like Vicq  d'Azyr, Le  Cat, Jacobceus, Rolli,
 and  Bianchini, have given their testimony in
 support of such facts, it requires some effort to
 believe them unfounded in truth.   At the same
 time, in  perusing  the  cases themselves, it  is
 impossible  to divest the mind  of an idea that
 some misstatement or other exists  either as to
 their alleged cause or their actual nature—and
 that their relators  have been led into an unin-
 tentional misrepresentation.   So  thoroughly
 am I satisfied of this, that I think it doubtful
 whether, if the  clothes of a notorious drunkard
 were to catch fire, his body would  be more se-
 verely  injured,  or  more liable to  become in-
 flammable,  than that of the soberest person.  It
 seems probable that to the effects of a stroke of
, lightning are we to impute many of the cases
 in question.  M. Foder6 remarks,  that hydro-
 gen gas is developed in certain cases of disease,
 even in the living body; and he seems inclined
 to join with M. Mere  in  attributing  what  is
 called spontaneous  combustion,  to  the  united
 action of hydrogen and electricity in the first
 instance, favoured  by the  accumulation of ani-
 mal  oil, and the  impregnation of spirituous
 liquors. In the  present state of our knowledge,
 it is needless to hazard any conjectures upon
 this  mysterious subject.   The best way is to
                      N 
112
 give a case or two, and let the reader judge for
 himself.

   Case op  Marv  Cluks.—" This woman,
 aged fifty, was much addicted to intoxication.
 Her propensity to this vice had increased after
 the  death of her husband, which happened a
 year and a half before: for about a year, scarce-
 ly a day had passed in the course of which she
 did not drink at least half a pint of rum or ani-
 seed-water.   Her health  gradually  declined,
 and  about the beginning of February, she was
 attacked by the jaundice and confined to her
 bed.  Though she was  incapable of much ac-
 tion, and not in a condition to work, she  still
 continued her old habit of drinking every day,
 and  smoking  a pipe of tobacco.  The bed in
 which she lay stood parallel to the chimney of
 the  apartment, the distance  from it of about
 three feet.   On Saturday morning, the  1st of
 March,  she fell on the floor, and  her extreme
 weakness having prevented her from getting
 up, she  remained in that state till some one en-
 tered and put her to bed.   The following night
 she wished to be left alone: a woman quitted
 her at half-past eleven, and, according to* cus-
 tom, shut the door and locked it.  She  had
 put on  the fire two  large pieces of coal,  and
placed a light in a candlestick on a chair at the
head of  the bed.  At half-past five in the morn-
ing, smoke was seen  issuing through the win- 
143
dow, and the door being speedily broke open,
some flames which were in the room were soon
extinguished.   Between the bed and the chim-
ney  were found the remains of the unfortunate
Clues; one leg and a thigh were still entire, but
there remained nothing of the  skin, the mus-
cles, and the viscera.   The bones of the cra-
nium, the breast, the spine, and the upper ex-
tremities were  entirely calcined,  and covered
with a whitish efflorescence.  The people were
much surprised that the furniture had sustained
60 little  injury.  The side of  the  bed which
was  next  the  chimney  had  suffered  most;
the wood of it was slightly burned, but the
feather-bed, the  clothes,  and  covering were
safe.  I entered the apartment about two hours
after it had been opened, and observed that the
walls and  every thing in  it were  blackened;
that  it was filled with a very disagreeable va-
pour; but that  nothing except  the  body exhi-
bited any strong traces of fire."
  This case first appeared in the Annual Regis-
ter for 1773, and is a fair specimen of the cases
collected in the Journal de Physique.   There
is no evidence that the combustion was sponta-
neous, as it may have been occasioned either
by lightning, or by contact with the fire. The
only circumstance which militates  against the
latter supposition, is the very trifling degree of
burning that was found in the apartment. 
144
  Case op  Don Gio Maria  Bertholi.—
" Having spent the day in travelling about the
country, he arrived in the evening at the house
of his brother-in-law. He immediately request-
ed  to  be  shown to his destined  apartment,
where he had a handkerchief placed between
his  shirt and shoulders;  and, being left alone,
betook himself to his devotions.  A few mi-
nutes had scarcely elapsed when an extraordi-
nary noise was heard in  the chamber, and the
cries of the unfortunate  man were particularly
distinguished: the people of the house hastily
entering the room, found him extended on the
floor, and surrounded by a light flame, which
receded (d mesure) as  they approached, and
finally vanished.  On the  following morning,
the patient was examined by M.. Battlaglia,
who found the integuments of  the right arm
almost entirely detached, and pendant from the
flesh; from the shoulders to the thighs, the in-
teguments were equally injured;  and on the
right hand,  the most part injured, mortifica-
tion  had  already  commenced, which,  not-
withstanding immediate scarification, rapidly
extended itself.  The patient  complained of
burning thirst,  was horribly  convulsed,  and
was exhausted by continual vomiting, accom-
panied by fever and delirium.   On the fourth
day, after two hours of comatose insensibility,
he  expired.   During the whole period of his
suffering, it was impossible to trace any symp- 
145
tomatic affection.   A short time previous to his
death, M.  Battlaglia observed  with astonish-
ment that putrefaction had made so much  pro-
gress; the  body already  exhaled  an insuffera-
ble odour;  worms crawled from it on the bed,
and the nails had become detached from the
left hand.
   " The account given by the unhappy patient
was, that he felt a stroke like the blow of a cud-
gel on the right hand, and at the same time he
saw a lambent  flame attach itself to his shirt,
which was immediately reduced to ashes, his
wristbands, at the same time,  being utterly un-
touched.  The handkerchief, which, as before
mentioned, was placed between his shoulders
and his shirt, was entire, and free from  any
trace  of burning; his  breeches were equally
uninjured, but  though  not a  hair of his  head
was burned, his  coif was totally consumed.
The weather, on the night of the accident, was
calm, and the air very pure; no empyreumatic
or  bituminous  odour was perceived in  the
room, which was  also free from smoke; there
was no vestige of fire, except that the lamp
which had been full of oil, was found dry,  and
the wick reduced to  a cinder."
  This case is from the work of Fodere, and is
given as abridged by Paris and Fonblanque, in
their  excellent treatise  on Medical Jurispru-
dence.  It occurred in 1776, and is one of the
best authenticated to be met with.   I am  not
                    N 2 
146
aware that the subject of it was a drunkard:  if
he were not, and if the facts be really true, we
must  conclude that spontaneous  combustion
may occur in sober persons, as well as in the
dissipated.
  Some  chemists have attempted to account
for this kind of  combustion, by the formation
of phosphuretted hydrogen in the body.   This
gas, as is well known, inflames on exposure to
the  air; nor can there be a doubt that if a suffi-
cient quantity were generated, the body might
be easily enough consumed.  If such an accu-
mulation can be proved ever to take place, there
is an end to conjecture; and we have before us
a cause sufficiently potent  to account for the
burning.  But all  the related cases  rest  on
vague report, and are unsupported by such evi-
dence as would warrant us in placing much re-
liance upon them. Inflammable eructations are
said to occur occasionally in northern latitudes,
when the body has been exposed to intense cold
after excessive indulgence in spirituous liquors;
and the case of a Bohemian peasant is narrated,
who lost his life in consequence of ;i column  of
ignited inflammable air issuing from his mouth,
and baffling extinction.  This  case, ;is well  as
others of the same kind,  is alleged  to have
arisen  from  phosphuretted  hydrogen, generat-
ed  by some chemical combination of  alcohol
and animal  substances in the stomach.   What
truth  there may be in these relations I  do not 
147
pretend to say.   They  wear, unquestionably,
the aspect of fiction; and are, notwithstanding,
repeated from so many quarters, that it is near-
ly as difficult  to  doubt  them  altogether as to
give them our  entire  belief.  There  is  one
thing, however, which  may  be safely denied;
and that is the fact of drunkards having been
blown  up  in  consequence of their breath or
eructations catching fire from the application of
a lighted candle.   These tales are principally
of American extraction; and  seem elaborated
by that propensity for the marvellous for which
our transatlantic  brethren have, of late years,
been distinguished.
   The  subject of spontaneous combustion is
one well worth investigating both in a medical
and judicial point of view.   At present it is
unnecessary to enter more deeply  into it, as it
is supported more by hypothesis and loose ana-
logy than by authenticated  facts.  In arguing
upon its possibility, one great error  has been
committed by physicians; and that is the cir-
cumstance of  confounding the state of the liv-
ing  system with that  of the dead.  In post
mortem examinations,  nothing is more com-
mon than to find the body charged with  inflam-
mable   gases; whence  the  insufferable  odour
which  exhales from it.  That such a quantity of
these might accumulate, as to support combus-
tion, is, perhaps, not impossible,  but it is to
be remembered,  that they are the result of de- 
148
composition,—and  that  such  decomposition
cannot take place to any extent  in the living
fibre.  When  animal matter runs into decay,
it parts with many of the laws which vitality
imposed upon  it, and enters under the domi-
nion of others.  But chemists, who in general
are  indifferent physiologists, have  neglected
these facts, and have thus been the means of in-
troducing  into medicine  much  that is errone-
ous, both in theory and practice. 
CHAPTER XII.
DRUNKENNESS judicially considered.
  Not only does the drunkard draw  down
upon himself many diseases, both of body and
mind, but if, in his intoxication, he commit any
crime or misdemeanour, he becomes, like other
subjects, amenable to the pains of law.  In this
respect, indeed, he is worse off than sober per-
sons, for drunkenness, far from palliating, is
held to aggravate every offence: the law does
not regard it as any extenuation of crime. "A
drunkard," says Sir Edward Coke, "who is
voluntarious demon, hath not privilege there-
by; but what hurt  or ill  soever he doth, his
drunkenness doth aggravate  it."  In the case
of the King versus Maclauchlin, March,  1737,
the plea of drunkenness, set up in mitigation of 
150
of punishment, was  not allowed by the court.
Sir George Mackenzie says, he  never found it
sustained, and that  in a case of murder it was
repelled—Spott  ve?sus Douglas,   1667.   Sir
Matthew Hales,  c. 4, is clear  against  the  va-
lidity of  the defence, and all agree that "levis
et modica ebrietas non excusat  nee  minuit
delictum.''  It  is a maxim in legal practice,
that  "those who presume to  commit  crimes
when drunk, must submit to punishment when
sober." This state of the law is not peculiar to
modern times.   In  ancient Greece, it was de-
creed by Pittacus, that "he  who committed a
crime  when intoxicated, should   receive  a
double punishment," viz. one for the  crime
itself,  and the  other  for the  ebriety which
prompted him to commit it.  The Athenians
not only  punished offences done in drunkenness
with increased severity, but, by an enactment of
Solon, inebriation in a magistrate  was made
capital.  The Roman law was, in  some mea-
sure,  an  exception, and admitted  ebriety as  a
plea  for any misdeeds committed under its in-
fluence :  per vinum delapsis  capitalis pceno
remittitur.  Notwithstanding this  tenderness
to offences by drunkards, the Romans, at  one
period, were inconsistent enough to punish the
vice  itself with death,  if found occurring  in a
woman.   By two acts passed  in the reign of
James I., drunkenness was punishable with
fine,  and,  failing payment,  with  sitting pub* 
151
licly for six hours in the stocks; 4 Jac. I. c. 5,
and 21 Jac. I. c. 7.  By the first of these acts,
justices of the peace may proceed against drunk-
ards at the sessions, by way of indictment; and
this act still remains in operation.  The eccle-
siastical courts may also take cognizance of the
offence, and punish it  accordingly.  A bond
signed in a fit of intoxication, holds in law, and
is  perfectly binding,  unless it can be shown
that the person who signed it was inebriated by
the collusion or contrivance of those to whom
the bond  was given.   A judge or magistrate
found drunk upon  the  bench, is liable to  re-
moval  from his  office;  and  decisions pro-
nounced by him  in that state are held to be
null and void.  Even  in blasphemy, uttered in
a state of ebriety, the defence goes for nothing,
as  is manifest from the following case, given in
Maclaurin's Arguments and Decisions, p. 732.
   "Nov. 22, 1697.  Patrick Kinninmouth, of
that ilk, was brought to  trial for blasphemy and
adultery. The last charge was passed from. The
indictment alleged, He had affirmed Christ was
a bastard,  and that he  had said, < If any woman
had God on one  side, and Christ on the other,
he would stow [cut] the lugs [ears] out of her
head  in spite of  them both.'  He pleaded
chiefly that he was drunk  or mad when he ut-
tered these expressions, if  he  did utter them.
The  court found the libel relevant to infer the
pains libelled, i. e. death; and found the de- 
152
fence, That the pannel was furious or distracted
in his wits relevant; but repelled the alledgeance
of fury or  distraction arising from drunken-
ness."
  It thus appears that the laws both of Scotland
and England agree in considering drunkenness
no palliation of crime, but rather the reverse;
and it is well that it  is so,  seeing that ebriety
could be easilycounterfeited, and made a cloak
for the  commission of atrocious  offences.  By
the laws, drunkenness is looked upon as cri-
minal, and this  being the case, they could not
consistently  allow one crime  to mitigate the
penalties due to another. 
CHAPTER XIII.
METHOD OP CURING THE HABIT  OP DRUNKEN-
                   NESS.
   To remove the habit of drunkenness from
any one in whom it has been long established,
is a task of peculiar difficulty.  We  have not
only  to contend against the cravings of the
body, but  against those of the mind; and in
struggling with both, we are, in reality, carry-
ing on a combat with  nature itself.  The sys-
tem no longer performs  its functions in the
usual manner; and to restore these functions to
their previous tone of action, is more difficult
than it would  be to give  them an action alto-
gether the reverse of nature and of health.
  The first step  to be  adopted, is the discon-
tinuance of all liquors or substances which have
                    o 
154
the power of intoxicating.  The only question
is—should they be dropped at once, or by de-
grees?  Dr. Trotter, in his Essay on Drunken-
ness, has entered into along train of argument,
to  prove that, in all  cases, they ought  to  be
given up instanter.   He contends, that, being
in  themselves injurious, their  sudden disconti-
nuance cannot possibly be attended with  harm.
But his reasonings on this point, though inge-
nious, are not conclusive.  A  darlc unwhole-
some dungeon is a bad  thing, but it has been
remarked, that those who have been long con-
fined to such a place,  have become sick if sud-
denly exposed to the light and pure air,  on re-
covering their liberty:  had this been done by
degrees, no evil effects would have ensued.  A
removal  from an unhealthy climate (to  which
years had habituated  a man) to a healthy one,
has sometimes been attended with  similar con-
sequences.   Even  old ulcers cannot always be
quickly healed up with safety.   Inebriation
becomes, as it were, a second nature, and  is not
to  be  rapidly changed with  impunity,  more
than other natures.  Spurzheim* advances the
same opinion.  "Drunkards,"  says he, "can-
not leave off their bad habits suddenly, without
injuring  their health."   Dr. Darwin speaks in
like terms of the injurious effects of too sudden
a change; and for these, and other reasons about

   • View of the Elementary Principles of Education. 
155
to be detailed, I am disposed, upon the whole,
to coincide with them.
   If we consider attentively the system of man,
we will be satisfied that it accommodates itself
to various states of action.  It will perform a
healthy action, of which there is only one state,
or a diseased action, of which there are a hun-
dred.  The former is  uniform, and homogene-
ous.  It  may raised or lowered  according  to
the state of the  circulation, but  its nature is
ever the same: when that changes—when it
assumes  new characters—it  is no longer  the
action of health, but of disease.  The latter may
be multiplied to infinity, and varies with a thou-
sand circumstances; such as the organ which is
affected, and  the substance  which is  taken.
Now, drunkenness, in the long run, is one of
those diseased  actions.  The system no longer
acts with its original purity: it is operated upon
by a fictitious excitement, and, in the course of
time, assumes a state  quite foreign to its origi-
nal  constitution—an  action  which,  however
unhealthy, becomes, ultimately, in some mea-
sure, natural.  When we use opium for a long
time, we cannot immediately get rid of it, be-
cause it has given  rise to a false action in the
system—which latter would suffer a sudden
disorder if deprived of its accustomed stimulus.
Disease here triumphs over health, and has es-
tablished so strong a hold upon the body, that
it is dislodged with difficulty by its lawful pos- 
156
sessor.  When we wish to get rid of opium, or
any other narcotic to which we are accustomed,
we must do so by degrees,  and let the healthy
action gradually expel the diseased one.  Place
spirits or wine in  the situation of opium, and
the results will be the same. For these reasons,
I am inclined to think, that, in many cases at
least, it would  be  improper and dangerous to
remove intoxicating liquors all at once from the
drunkard.  Such  a proceeding seems  at  va-
riance with the established actions of the human
body, and as injudicious as  unphilosophical.
   I do  not, however, mean to say, that there
are no cases in which it would be necessary to
drop liquors all at once.  When much bodily
vigour  remains—when the morning  cravings
for the bottle are not irresistible, nor the appe-
tite altogether broken, the person should give
over his bad habits instantly.  This is  a state of
incipient drunkenness. He has not yet acquir-
ed the constitution of a confirmed sot, and the
sooner  he  ceases the better.  The immediate
abandonment of drinking may also, in general,
take place when there is any organic disease,
such as enlarged liver, dropsy, or schirrus sto-
mach.  Under  these  circumstances, the sacri-
fice is much less than at a  previous period, as
the frame has, in a great measure, lost its power
of withstanding liquors, and the relish for them
is also considerably lessened.  But  even then,
the sudden deprivation of  the  accustomed sti- 
157
mulus  has  been known to produce dangerous
exhaustion; and it has been found necessary to
give it again, though in  more moderate quanti-
ties.  Those drunkards who have no particular
disease, unless a tremor and loss of appetite be
so denominated, require to be deprived of the
bottle by degrees.  Their system would be apt
to fall into  a state of torpor if it were suddenly
taken away, and various mental diseases, such
as melancholy, madness, and delirium tremens,
might even be  the result. With such persons,
however, it must  be acknowledged that there
is very great difficulty in getting their potations
diminished.  Few have fortitude to submit to
any reduction.  There is, as  the period of the
accustomed indulgence  arrives, an oppression
and faintness at the prsecordia, which human
nature can scarcely endure,  together with a
gnawing desire, infinitely more insatiable than
the longings of a pregnant woman.
   There are many persons that cannot be called
drunkards, who,  nevertheless, indulge pretty
freely in the bottle, though after reasonable in-
tervals. Such persons usually possess abundance
of health,  and  resist intoxication  powerfully.
Here the  stomach and  system in  general  lose
their  irritability, in the same way as  in con-
firmed topers, but  this is more from torpor than
from weakness.  The springs of life become less
delicate; the pivots on which  they move get,
as it were, clogged, and, though existence goes
                    o 2 
158
 on with vigour, it  is not  the  bounding  and
 elastic vigour of perfect health.  This proceeds
 not from debility, but from  torpor; the muscu-
 lar fibre becoming, like the hands of a labour-
 ing man, hardened and blunted in its sensibili-
 ties.   Such  are  the effects brought on by a
frequent use of inebriating  agents, but an ex-
 cessive use in  every case gives rise  to weak-
 ness.   This the system  can only escape by a
 proper interval being allowed to elapse between
 our indulgences.  But if dose be heaped  on
 dose,  before  it has time to rally  from former
 exhaustion, it becomes more and  more debili-
 tated;  the  blood ceases  to  circulate with  its
 wonted force; the secretions get defective; and
 the tone of the living fibre daily enfeebled.
   Drunkenness,  in  the long run, changes  its
 character.  The  sensations  of the  confirmed
 tippler, when intoxicated, are nothing, in point
 of pleasure, to those of the habitually temperate
 man, in the same condition.   We drink at first
 for the serenity which  is  diffused  over  the
 mind,  and  not from  any positive love we bear
 to the  liquor.   But, in the course  of time,  the
 influence of the latter, in producing gay images,
 is deadened.  It is then chiefly a mere animal
 fondness for drink which actuates us.  We like
the taste of it, as a child likes sweetmeats; and
the stomach,  for a series of years, has been so
accustomed to  an unnatural stimulus, that it
cannot perform its functions properly without 
159
 it   In such a case, it may readily be believed
 that liquor could not be suddenly removed with
 safety.
   The habit will sometimes  be checked  by
 operating skilfully upon the mind.  If the per-
 son has a feeling heart, much  may be done by
 representing to him the state of misery into
 which he will  plunge himself, his family, and
 his friends.  Some men, by a strong effort, have
 given up liquors at once, in consequence of such
 representations.
   Many men become drunkards from family
 broils.  They  find no .comfort at home, and
 gladly seek for it out of doors.  In such cases,
.«t will be almost impossible to break the habit.
 The domestic sympathies and affections, which
 oppose a barrier to dissipation, and wean away
 me mind  from the bottle, have here no room
 to act.  When the mother of a family becomes
 addtcted to liquor, the  case is very afflicting.
 Home, instead of being the seat of comfort and
'order, becomes a species  of Pandemonium: the
 social circle is broken up, and  all  its happiness
 destroyed.  In this  case, there is no remedy
 but the removal of the drunkard.  A feeling of
 perversity has been known to effect a cure
 among the fair sex.  A  man  of Philadelphia,
I who was  afflicted with a drunken wife, put a
j cask of rum in her way,  in the charitable hope
I that she would drink herself to  death.  She
buspected the scheme, and  from a mere pnn- 
160
ciple  of  contradiction, abstained,  in all  time
coming,  from any  sort of indulgence  in the
bottle.
  Man is very much the creature of habit. By
drinking regularly at certain times, he feels the
longing for liquor at the stated return of those
periods—as after dinner, or immediately before
going to  bed, or whatever the  period may be.
He even feels it in certain  companies, or in a
particular tavern at which he is in the habit of
taking his  libations.  We  have all  heard the
story of  the man who could never pass an inn
on the road-side without entering it and taking
a glass, and who, when, after a violent effort, he
succeeded in getting beyond the spot, straight-
way returned to reward himself with a bumper
for his resolution.   It is a good rule  for drunk-
ards to break all such habits.  Let the frequent-
er of drinking clubs, masonic lodges, and other
Bacchanalian assemblages, leave off attending
these places, and if he must  drink,  let him do
so at home, where, there is every likelihood,
his potations will be less liberal.  Let him also
forswear the society of boon companions, either
in his own habitation or in theirs.  Let  him,
if  he can manage it, remove from the place of
his usual residence, and go  somewhere  else.
Let him also take abundance of exercise, court
the society of intellectual  and sober  persons,
and turn his attention to reading, or  gardening,
or sailing, or whatever other amusement he has 
161
a fancy for.  By following this advice rigidly,
he  will  get  rid of  that  baleful  habit  which
haunts him like his shadow, and intrudes itself
by  day and by night into the sanctuary of his
thoughts.  And if he refuses  to lay aside  the
Circean cup,  let him reflect that Disease waits
upon  his steps—that Dropsy, Palsy, Emacia-
tion, Poverty, and Idiotism, followed by the
pale phantom, Death, pursue him like attendant
spirits and claim him as their prey.
  Sometimes an attack of disease has the effect
of sobering drunkards for the rest of their lives.
I knew a gentleman  who had apoplexy in con-
sequence of dissipation.   He fortunately reco-
vered, but the  danger which  he had escaped
made such an impression upon his mind, that
he never, till his dying day, tasted any liquor
stronger than simple water.  Many  persons,
after such  changes,  become remarkably lean;
but this is not an unhealthy emaciation.  Their
biental powers  also  suffer a very material im-
provement—the intellect becoming more pow-
erful, and the moral  feelings more  soft and re-
fined.
  Those who have been for many  years in  the
habit of indulging largely in drink, and to whom
it has  become an elixir vitse indispensable to
their  happiness, cannot be suddenly deprived
of it.   This should be done by slow degrees,
and must be the result of conviction.   If  the
quantity be forcibly diminished against the per- 
162
son's  will, no good can be, done; he will only
seize the first opportunity to remunerate him-
self for what he has been deprived of, and pro-
ceed to greater  excesses than before.  If his
mind  'can be brought,  by calm  reflection, to
submit to the decrease, much may be accom-
plished in the way of reformation. Many diffi-
culties undoubtedly attend this gradual process,
and no ordinary strength of mind is required
for its completion.  It is, however,  less  dan-
gerous than the  method recommended by  Dr.
Trotter,  and ultimately much  more  effectual.
Even although  his plan were free of hazard,
its effects are not likely to be lasting.   The un-
natural action, to which long intemperance had
given rise, clings to the system with pertina-
cious  adherence.  The remembrance of liquor,
like a delightful vision, still attaches itself to
the drunkard's mind; and he longs, with insuf-
ferable ardour, to feel  once more the ecstasies
to which it gave  birth.   This  is the conse-
quence of a too rapid separation.   Had the sym-
pathies of nature been gradually operated upon,
there  would  have been less violence, and the
longings had a better chance of wearing insen-
sibly away.
   Among  the great authorities  for  acting in
this manner, may be mentioned the celebrated
Dr. Pitcairn.  In attempting to  break the ha-
bit in a Highland chieftain, one of his patients,
he exacted a promise that the latter would 
163
every day drop a certain quantity of sealing-
wax into his glass.  He did so, and as the wax
accumulated, the capacity of the glass diminish-
ed,  and, consequently, the quantity of*whisky
it was capable of containing.  By this plan he
was cured of his bad habit altogether.  In men-
tioning such a whimsical proceeding, I do not
mean  particularly to  recommend  it for adop-
tion; although I am satisfied that the principle
on  which its eccentric  contriver proceeded,
was substantially correct.
  I cannot give any  direction with regard to
the regimen of a reformed drunkard.   This will
depend upon  different circumstances, such as
age, constitution, diseases, and manner of living.
It may be laid down as  a general  rule, that it
ought to be as little  heating as possible.   A
milk or vegetable diet will  commonly be pre-
ferable to every other.   But there are cases in
which food of a richer  quality is  requisite, as
when  there is much  emaciation and  debility.
Here it may even be necessary to give a mode-
rate quantity of wine.  In  gout, likewise, too
great a change of living is not always salutary,
more especially in advanced years, where there
is weakness of the digestive organs, brought on
by the disease.  In old age, wine  is often use-
ful to sustain the system, more especially when
sinking by the process of natural decay.  The
older a person is, the greater the inconvenience 
164
of abstaining all at once from liquors, and the
more slowly ought they to be taken away.  I
cannot-bring myself to believe that a man who,
for half*a century, has drunk freely, can  sud-
denly discontinue this ancient habit without a
certain degree of risk: the idea is opposed to all
that  we know of the  bodily and  mental func-
tions.
   In attempting to cure the habit of drunken-
ness, opium  may sometimes be used with ad-
vantage.   By giving it in moderate quantities,
the liquors which the person is in the habit of
taking may be diminished to a considerable ex-
tent, and he may thus be enabled to leave them
off altogether.   There is only one risk, and it
is this—that he may become as confirmed a vo-
tary of opium  as he  was before of spirits or
wine.   Of two  evils  however, we should al-
ways choose the least; and it is certain that,
however perniciously opium may act upon the
system, its moral effects, and its  power of in-
juring  reputation, are  decidedly less  formi-
dable  than those of the  ordinary intoxicating
agents.
   It very often happens, after a long course of
dissipation,  that the stomach loses its tone, and
rejects almost every thing that  is  swallowed.
The remedy, in this case, is  opium,  which
should be given in the solid form in preference
to any other.  Small quantities  of negus are 
165
 also beneficial; and the carbonate of ammonia,
 combined with some aromatic, is frequently at-
 tended with the best  effects.  Where there is
 much prostration of strength, wine should al-
 ways be given.  In such a case, the entire re-
 moval  of  the  long accustomed  stimulus wtfiild
 be attended with the worst effects.  This must
 be done gradually.
   Enervated drunkards will reap much benefit
 by removing to the country, if their usual  resi-
 ence is in town.  The free air and exercise re-
 novate their enfeebled frames; new scenes are
 presented to occupy  their attention; and, the
 mind being withdrawn from former  scenes,
 the chain of  past  associations  is  broken in
 two.
   Warm and cold bathing will occasionally be
 useful,  according to circumstances.  Bitters are
 not to be  recommended, especially if employ-
 ed under the medium of spirits.   When there
 is much debility, chalybeates will prove ser-
viceable.  A visit to places where there are mi-
 neral springs is of use, not only from the wa-
 ters, but from the agreeable society to be  met
' with at such quarters.  The great art of break-
 ing the habit consists in managing the drunk-
 ard with kindness and address.   This manage-
 ment must, of course, be modified by the events
*which present themselves, and which will vary
 in different cases.
                      p 
166
  Persons residing in tropical climates ought,
more than others, to avoid intoxicating liquors.
It is too much the practice in the West  Indies
to allay thirst by copious draughts of rum punch.
In the East Indies, both the  natives and stran-
gers,  with  greater propriety,  principally  use
sherbet.   In countries where  the solar influence
is felt with such force,  we cannot be too tem-
perate.  The food should be  chiefly vegetable,
and  the  drink as unirritating as possible.   It
may be laid down as an axiom, that, in  these
regions, wine and ardent spirits are invariably
hurtful; not only in immediately heating  the
body,  but in exposing  it to the  influence of
other diseases.*  A great portion of the deaths
which occur among  Europeans in the tropics,
are brought on by excess.   Instead of suiting
their regimen to the climate, they persist in the
habits  of their own country,  without reflecting
that what is comparatively harmless in one re-
gion, is  most destructive in another.   There
cannot be a stronger proof  of this than  the
French troops in the West  Indies  having al-
ways,  except  in the  St. Domingo  expedition,
suffered less, in proportion  to their numbers,

  * " In warm countries, tlie aqueous part of the blood
loses itself greatly  by perspiration; it must therefore be
supplied by a like liquid. Water  is there of admirable
use; strong1 liquors would coagulate the globules of blood
that remain  after the transuding of the aqueous humour."
—Montesquieu, Book xiv.  Chap. x. 
167
than the British, who are unquestionably more
addicted to intemperance.
  A word to punch drinkers.  If those gentle-
men who  make an invariable habit of swilling
punch after  dinner,  are  averse  to. leave the
world ten  or fifteen  years  before their time,
they would do well to diminish their potations.
Punch is  about the best way of  taking  ardent
spirits, and a moderate quantity will do no great
harm, but its daily and copious  use,  as com-
monly practised, they may rest assured, is most
pernicious.   This practice has long been ex-
ceedingly common, and those who persist in it
are taking a short cut  to the grave,  as their
swelled livers, schirrus  stomachs, and apoplec-
tic-looking physiognomies  amply  testify.  I
believe there does not exist a confirmed punch
drinker, of fifteen years'  standing, whose vis-
cera are not more or less diseased.
  It is a common practice in the west of Scot-
land  to send persons who are excessively ad-
dicted to  drunkenness, to rusticate and learn
sobriety on the islands of Loch Lomond.  There
are, I believe, two islands appropriated for the
purpose, where the convicts meet with due at-
tention, and whatever indulgences their  friends
choose to  extend towards them.  Whether such
a proceeding is  consistent with  law,  or well
adapted to answer the end in view,  may  be
reasonably doubted,  but  of its severity as  a 
168
punishment, there can be no  question.  It is,
indeed, impossible to inflict any penalty upon
drunkards so great as that of absolutely prevent-
ing them from indulging in liquor. 
CHAPTER XIV.
ADVICE TO DETERMINED DRUNKARDS.
  If a man is resolved to continue a drunkard,
it may here be proper to mention in what man-
ner he  can do so with  least  risk to himself.
One of the principal rules to  be observed, not
only by him, but by habitually sober people,
is never to take any inebriating liquor, espe-
cially spirits, upon an empty stomach.   There
is no habit more  common or more destructive
than this:  it  not only  intoxicates  readier than
when food has  been previously  taken, but it
has a much greater tendency to impair the func-
tions  of the   digestive organs.   In  addition,
drunkards should shun raw spirits, which more
rapidly bring on  disease of the  stomach,  than
when used in  a diluted state.   These fluids
                    p 2 
170
are safe in  proportion to  the state of  their
dilution:  the best  form, therefore,  in which
they  can  be  employed,  is,  I  believe,  cold
punch.   This,  when   well made,  is  always
weaker than grog or toddy; and the acid with
which it is impregnated, has not only  a  brac-
ing effect upon  the stomach, but operates as a
diuretic—thereby  counteracting, in  a conside-
rable degree, the  activity  of the  spirit itself.
The cases  where  the  acid is prejudicial, are
those of impaired action of the digestive organs,
such as heartburn or dyspepsia.  It should also
be  dispensed with whenever there is a ten-
dency in the constitution to form  gravel, and
also in all cases of gout.   The next best form
is that  of  grog;* and  warm toddy  the third.
The last, to be good, must be stronger than the
two others, while the hot water with which it
is made,  increases the naturally  stimulating
qualities of the active ingredient.
  The malt liquor drunkard should,  as a gene-
ral rule, prefer porter to strong ale.  Herb ale
and purl are  very  pernicious, but the  lighter

  *  Tlie origin of the term grog is curious.  Tic-fore the
time of Admiral Vernon, rum was given in  its raw state to
the seamen;  but he ordered it to be diluted, previous to
delivery, with a certain quantity  of water.  So incensed
were the tars at this watering of their favourite liquor, that
they nicknamed the Admiral Old Grog, in allusion to a
grogram coat which he chanced to wear; hence the name. 
171
varieties, such as small beer and home-brewed,
are not only harmless, but even useful.
  As to the wine-bibber, no directions can be
given which will prove very satisfactory.  The
varieties of wines  are  so  numerous, that  any
complete estimate of their respective powers is
here  impossible.   It may, however,  be  laid
down as a general rule, that those which are
most diuretic,  and  excite  least headach  and
fever, are the safest for the constitution.   The
light dry wines, such  as Hock, Claret, Bur-
gundy,  Rhenish and Hermitage, are, generally
speaking, more salubrious  than the stronger
varieties, such  as Port, Sherry, or Madeira.
Claret,  in particular, is the most  wholesome
wine that  is  known.   Tokay,  Frontignac,
Malmsey, Vino Tinto, Montefiascone, Canary,
and other sweet wines, are apt, in consequence
of their imperfect fermentation, to poduce acid
upon weak  stomachs; but in other cases they
are delightful  drinks; and  when  there  is  no
tendency to  acidity in the system, they may be
taken with comparative safety to a considerable
extent.   Whenever there is disease, attention
must be paid to the wines  best adapted to its
particular nature.   For  instance, in gout  the
acescent wines, such as  Hock and Claret, must
be avoided, and Sherry  or Madeira substituted
in their room; and should even these run into
the acetous  fermentation, they must  be laid
aside, and replaced by weak brandy and water. 
172
Champaign, except in cases of weak digestion,
is one of the safest wines  that can  be drunk.
Its intoxicating effects are rapid, but exceeding-
ly transient, and depend partly upon the car-
bonic acid which is evolved from it, and partly
upon the  alcohol, which is suspended in this
gas, being applied rapidly and extensively to a
large surface of the stomach.
  Drunkards will do well to follow the maxim
of the facetious Morgan  O'Doherty, and never
mix their wines.  Whatever wine they com-
mence with, to that let them adhere throughout
the evening.  If there be any case where this
rule may be transgressed with safety, it is per-
haps in favour of Claret, a moderate quantity of
which is both pleasant and refreshing after a
course of  Port or Madeira.  Nor is the advice
of the same eccentric authority, with regard to
malt liquors, less just, or less worthy of obser-
vance—the toper being recommended to abstain
scrupulously from such fluids when  he means,
before-hand, to "make an evening of it," and
sit long at the bottle.   The mixture, unques-
tionably, not only disorders the stomach, but
effectually weakens the ability of the person to
withstand the forthcoming debauch. 
CHAPTER  XV.
DRUNKENNESS IN NURSES.
  Women, especially in a low station, who act
as nurses, are strongly addicted  to the practice
of drinking porter and  ales, for the purpose of
augmenting their milk.   No  language can be
sufficiently strong  to  deprecate  this habit.  It
is most pernicious, and lays the foundation of a
multitude of diseases to the infant.  The milk,
which ought to be  bland and unirritating, ac-
quires certain heating  qualities, and becomes
deteriorated  to a  degree, of which those un-
accustomed to investigate  such matters,  have
little  conception.   The  child   nursed  by  a
drunkard is  hardly  ever healthy.   It is, in a
particular manner, subject to  derangements of 
174
the digestive organs, and convulsive affections.
With regard to the latter, Dr. North* remarks,
that he has seen them almost instantly removed
by  the child  being  transferred to a temperate
woman.   I have observed  the  same thing not
only in  convulsive  cases, but in  many others.
No woman is qualified to be  a nurse, unless
strictly  sober; and  though  stout children are
sometimes reared by persons who indulge to a
considerable extent  in  liquor, there can  be no
doubt that they are thereby exposed to risk,
and that they would have had a much  better
chance of doing well, if the same  quantity of
milk had been furnished by natural means.  If
a woman  cannot afford the necessary supply,
without these indulgences, she should give over
the infant to some one who can, and drop nurs-
ing altogether.  The only  cases in which a
moderate  portion of malt liquor  is justifiable,
are when  the milk  is deficient, and the nurse
averse or unable to put another in her  place.
Here, of  two evils we choose the least, and
rather give the infant milk of an inferior quali-
ty,  than endanger  its  health  by  weaning it
prematurely,  or stinting it of its  accustomed
nourishment.
  Connected with  this  subject is the practice
of administering stimulating liquors to children.
This habit is  so common in some parts of Scot-

  * Practical Observations on  the Convulsions of Infants. 
175
land, that infants of a few  days old are often
forced  to swallow raw whisky. Parents should
be careful of allowing their offspring stimulat-
ing liquor of  any kind.  The earlier persons
are initiated in  its  use,  the more completely
does it gain  dominion over them, and the more
difficult is the passion for it to be eradicated.
Children naturally dislike liquors, a pretty con-
vincing proof that in early life they are totally
uncalled for, and that they only become agree-
able by habit.   It  is, in general, long  before
the palate is  reconciled to malt  liquors;  and
most young persons prefer the sweet  home-
made wines of their own country, to the rich-
er varieties  imported from abroad.  This shows
that the love of  such  stimulants is in  a great
measure acquired, and also points out the neces-
sity of  guarding youth, as much as possible,
from the acquisition of so unnatural a taste. 
••
CHAPTER XVI.
LIQUORS NOT ALWAYS HURTFUL.
  Though drunkenness is always injurious, it
does not follow that a  moderate use of those
agents, which  produce  it, is  so.  So far is this
from  being the case, that inebriating  liquors
are sometimes positively beneficial.  It is im-
possible to deny that, in particular situations,
as in those of hard-wrought seamen and soldiers,
a moderate allowance is proper.   The body, in
such cases, would often sink under the accumu-
lation of fatigue, if not recruited by some arti-
ficial stimulus.   When Captain Bligh  and his
unfortunate companions were exposed to those
dreadful privations  consequent  to  their being
set adrift,  in an open boat, by the mutineers of
the Bounty, the few drops of rum which were 
177
occasionally doled out to each individual, prov-
ed of such extraordinary service, that, without
this providential aid, every one must have per-
ished of absolute exhaustion.  This, and innu-
merable cases besides, prove that if liquors are
often perverted to  the worst, purposes, and capa-
ble of  producing the greatest calamities, they
are also, in particular circumstances, of unques-
tionable benefit.  It is unnecessary to mention
many diseases of debility, wherein wine is of
more use than any medicine the physician  can
administer.   Malt liquors also, when  used in
moderation, are often beneficial.   Though the
drunkenness produced by their excessive  use
is of the most stupifying and  disgusting kind,
yet,  under  temperate  management, they  are
more wholesome than either  spirits  or wine.
They abound in  nourishment,  and  are well
adapted to the labouring man, whose food is
usually not of a very nutritive character.  Every
pugilist knows that under the use of ale or por-
ter he acquires strength much more effectually
than  under either  wine or spirits.  The only
regret is, that malt liquors are so often adulte-
rated by narcotics.  This renders them impro-
per for  persons of a plethoric habit of body,
and also prevents them from being employed in
many cases, in which they might otherwise be
useful.  It is to be regretted that the system of
making home-brewed  ale, so  common among
the English,  has made little progress in Scot-
                     Q 
178
land.   This  excellent beverage is free  from
those  dangerous combinations employed by the
brewers; and to the labouring classes in parti-
cular, it is  a most  nourishing and salubrious
drink.*                                  .
  In higher circles,  where there is good living
and little work, liquors of any kind are far less
necessary; and till a man begins to get into the
decline  of  life, they are  absolutely useless.
When that happens, he will be the better of a
moderate allowance to recruit the vigour which
approaching age  steals from the  frame.   For
young and middle-aged men, in good circum-
stances, water is the best drink. The food they
eat is sufficiently  nutritious and stimulating
without any assistance from liquor.  This they
may  depend upon; and, notwithstanding the
ideas  they may entertain of the effeminacy of
the water drinker, there can be no doubt that,
both in body and mind, he  is much more envi-
ably situated than themselves.  His blood flows
as cool  and  as pure as the element he quaffs;
his brain is  clear and composed;  he is not en-
cumbered with any  useless corpulency;  his
body is free of all bad humours; his stomach of
all bad digestions; and his appetite is healthy
and natural.  Having stated thus much, I am

  * "In no respect is the alteration in diet more injurious,
than in substituting ardent spirits for ale, the ancient bevc
rage of the common people."—Sir John Sinclair. 
179
not ascetic enough to maintain that any man in
health will be the worse  of  a  moderate allow-
ance.   It is  only such an excess as injures the
constitution, that is to be blamed.  Abstractly
considered, liquors in themselves  are not per-
nicious: it is their abuse alone that  makes them
go, in the same  manner as the most wholesome
food becomes hurtful when  taken to a glutton-
ous excess. 
CHAPTER XVII.
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS.
  In the  foregoing chapters,  I  have said  as
much upon ebriety  as I thought would prove
interesting to the reader.   If  a person is dis-
posed to  go  very deeply into the subject,  he
may, indeed, still discover  some points which
have been omitted, and others which have been
disposed  of  more superficially, perhaps, than
they deserve.  These, however, I trust, are not
numerous, nor do I believe that the want of
them will be very seriously felt.   Among the
few intoxicating agents left undescribed, I may
mention bangue, camphor, leopard's-bane, (ar-
nica montana,) wolfsbane, {aconitum napel-
lus,) hop, (humulus,) carbonic  acid, and the 
181
numerous family of ethers.  Bangue is the leaf
of a species of wild hemp growing on the shores
of  Turkey, and  of the  Grecian  Archipelago.
It possesses many of  the properties of  opium,
and is used by the poorer classes of Mussulmen
as a substitute for this drug. Before being used,
it is dried, and the exsiccated leaves are either
chewed entire, or reduced into a fine powder,
and made into pills.  Its effects are to elevate
and calm the spirits, and  give  increased energy
to the corporeal  faculties—followed by languor
and depression, both  of body and  mind.   Leo-
pard's-bane, wolfsbane, hop, thorn-apple, {da-
tura stramonium,) hemlock, fox-glove, night-
shade,* henbane, and  indeed most narcotic poi-

  * The following descriptions of the effects of nightshade,
represent pretty accurately those of most narcotics:—
  1. " Some children ate,  in a garden, the fruit of the bel-
ladonna, (deadly nightshade.) Shortly after, they had burn-
ing fever, with convulsions, and very strong palpitations of
the heart: they lost their  senses, and became completely
delirious: one of them, four years of age, died the next day:
the stomach contained some  berries of the belladonna
crushed, and some  seeds; it exhibited three ulcers; the
heart was livid, and  the pericardium without serosity."—
Journal General de Medecine, liv. xxiv.jo. 2241
  2. " One child ate four  ripe berries of the belladonna,
another ate  six.   Both one  and the other were guilty of
extravagancies which astonished the mother; their pupils
were dilated; their countenances no  longer remained the
same; they had  a cheerful  delirium, accompanied with
fever.  The physician being called  in, found them in  a
state of great agitation, talking  at random, running,  jump-
                       Q2 
182
sons, possess the properties of opium and ban-
gue in a greater or lesser degree.   The effects
of the whole of them upon the  body are,  in a
great measure, the  same, and the  treatment of
drunkenness or poisoning  from them is in no
respect different.
  The intoxicating properties of  camphor are
considerable.   It elevates the spirits, increases
voluntary motion,  and  gives rise  to  vertigo;
and these effects, as in the case of all narcotics,
are succeeded by  drowsiness,  lassitude,  and
general depression.  In  large doses, syncope,
convulsions, delirium,  and even  death, take
place.  It is sometimes used as a substitute for
opium in  cases of delirium, where, from parti-
cular circumstances, the latter either cannot be
taken, or does not produce its usual effects.
The common belief, however, of camphor being
an antidote to this medicine, is quite unfounded.
It neither decomposes opium, nor prevents it
from acting poisonously upon the system;  but,
in consequence of its stimulating properties, it
may be advantageously  given in small doses to
remove  the stupor  and  coma produced  by
opium.

ing, laughing sardonically; their countenances purple, and
pulses hurried.  He administered to each of Uiem half a
grain of emetic tartar and a drachm of glauber salt, in four
or five ounces of water: they had copious evacuations dat-
ing seven or eight hours, and the symptoms disappeared."
—Gazette de Santi, 11 Thermidortan. xv. p. 5P8. 
183
  Carbonic acid  partially inebriates, as is seen
in drinking ginger beer, cider, Champaign, or
even soda water, in  which no alcoholic princi-
ple exists.   Ethers, when taken in quantity,
also give rise to a species of intoxication, which
resembles that from ardent  spirits in  all re-
spects, except in being more fugacious. 
 
APPENDIX.
No. I.
         Excerpt from Paris's Pharmacologia,


  " The characteristic ingredient of all wines is alcohol, and
the quantity of this, and the condition or state of combina-
tion in which it  exists, are the circumstances that include
all the interesting and disputed points of medical inquiry.
Daily experience convinces  us  that the same quantity of
alcohol, applied to the stomach ujlder  the form of natural
wine, and in a state of mixture with water, will  produce
very different  effects upon  the body, and  to an extent
which it is difficult to comprehend: it  has, for instance,
been demonstrated that Port, Madeira, and Sherry contain
from one-fourth to one-fifth of their bulk of alcohol, so that
a person who  takes a  bottle of either of them, will thus
take nearly half a pint of alcohol, or almost a pint of pure
brandy! and moreover,  that different wines, although of
the same specific gravity, and consequently containing the
same absolute proportion of spirit, will be found to vary
very considerably in their intoxicating powers; no wonder,
then, that such results should stagger the philosopher, who
is naturally unwilling to accept any tests of difference from
the nervous system, which elude the ordinary resources of 
186
analytical chemistry; the conclusion was therefore drawn,
that alcohol must necessarily exist in wine, in a far diffe-
rent condition from that in which we know it in a separate
state,  or, in other words, that its elements only could exist
in the vinous liquor, and that their union was determined,
and, consequently,  alcohol produced by the action of dia»
tillation.  That it was the product and not the educt of dis.
filiation, was an opinion which originated with Rouelle, who
asserted that alcohol was not completely formed  until the
temperature was raised to the point of distillation: more
lately, the same doctrine was revived and promulgated by
Fabbroni, in the memoirs of tlie Florentine academy. Gay-
Lussac has, however, silenced  the clamorous partisans of
this theory, by separating the alcohol by distillation at the
temperature of 66° Fah.; and by the aid of a vacuum, it has
since been  effected at 56°: besides, it has been shown that
by  precipitating the colouring matter, and some  of the
other elements of the wine, by sub-acetate of lead, and then
saturating the clear liquor with sub-carbonate of potass, the
alcohol may be completely separated without any elevation
of  temperature; and by this ingenious  expedient, Mr.
Brande has been enabled to construct a table, exhibiting
the proportions of combined alcohol which  exist in the
several kinds  of wine:  no  doubt, therefore, can  remain
upon this subject, and  the fact of the difference  of effect,
produced by the same  bulk of alcohol, when presented to
the stomach in different states of combination, add another
striking and instructive illustration to those already enume-
rated in the course of this work, of the extraordinary pow-
ers of chemical  combination in modifying the activity of
substances upon the living system- In the present instance,
the alcohol is so combined with the extractive  matter of
the wine, that it is  probably incapable of exerting its full
specific effects upon the stomach, before it becomes alter-
ed jn  its properties, or, in other words, digested,- and this
view of the subject may be fairly urged in explanation of
the reason why the intoxicating  effects of the same wine
are so liable  to vary, in degree, in  the  same individual,
from the peculiar state of his digestive organs at the time
pf  his potation.  Hitherto we  have  only spoken of pur« 
187
wine, but it is essential to state, that the stronger wirtes of
Spain, Portugal and Sicily,  are rendered remarkable in
this country by the addition of brandy, and must conse-
quently contain uncombined alcohol, the  proportion of
which, however, will not necessarily bear a ratio to the
quantity added, because, at the period of its admixture, a
renewed fermentation is produced by the scientific vint-
ner, which will assimilate and combine a certain portion of
the foreign spirits  with the wine: this manipulation, in
technical language, is called fretting-in*  The free alcohol
may, according to the experiments of Fabbroni^ be imme-
diately separated by saturating the vinous fluid with sub-
carbonate of potass, while the combined portion will remain
undisturbed: in ascertaining the fabrication and salubrity
of wine, this circumstance  ought always to constitute a
leading feature in the inquiry; and the tables of Mr. Brande
would have been greatly enhanced in practical value, had
the relative proportions of uncombined spirit been appre*
ciated in his experiments, since it is to this, and not to the
combined alcohol, that the injurious effects of Wine are to
be attributed.   ' It is well known,' observes Dr. Maccul-
loch, ' that diseases of the liver are the most common, and':,
the most formidable of those produced by the use of ardent ''■
spirits; it is equally certain that no such disorders follow the
intemperate Use of pure wine, however  long indulged ini
to the concealed and  unwitting consumption of spirit,
therefore, as contained in the  wines commonly drunk in
this country, is to be attributed the  excessive prevalence
of those hepatic affections, which are comparatively little
known to our continental neighbours.'  Thus much is cer-
tain, that their ordinary wines contain no alcohol but what
is disarmed of its virulence by the prophylactic energies of
combination." 
188
                        No. II.

 Mr. Brande's Table of the Alcoholic Strength of Liquors.

                                    Proportion of Spirit* p»r
                                        tent, by Mw»urr.
 l.Lissa,.......26.47
      Ditto,......24.35
               Average,      ....  25.41
 2. Raisin wine,......26.40
      Ditto,.......25.77
      Ditto,......23.20
               Average,      -     -     -     -  25.12
 3. Marsala,......26.03
      Ditto,.......25.05
               Average,   ....    25.09
 4. Madeira,.......24.42
      Ditto,......23.93
      Ditto, (Sircial,)   -  ,   -     -     -     -  21.40
      Ditto,......19.41
               Average,      ....  22.27
 5. Currant wine,.....20.55
 6. Sherry,.......19.81
      Ditto,......19.83
      Ditto,.......18.79
      Ditto,......18.25
               Average,      -     -     -     -  19.17
 7. Teneriffe,......19.79
 8. Colares,.......19.75
 9. Lachryma Christi,.....19.70
10. Constantia, (white,).....19.75
11.    Ditto,   (red,).....18.92
12. Lisbon,.......18.94
13. Malaga, (1666,).....18.94
14. Bucellas,.......18.49
15. Red Madeira,......22.30
      Ditto,  -    -......18.40
               Average,   ....    20.35 
189
16. Cape Muschat,.....• -  18.25
17. Cape Madeira,     -    -    ...     .     22.94
       Ditto,.......20.50
       Ditto,......18.11
               Average,     -    -    -    -  20.51
18. Grape wine,......18.11
19. Calcavella,     -    - »■  -    .    .    -19.20
       Ditto,     .......   18.10
               Average,     ....  18.65
20. Vidonia,......19.25
21. Alba Flora,......17.26
22. Malaga,.......17.26
23. White Hermitage,.....17.43
24. Rousillon,......19.00-
       Ditto,.......17.26
               Average,   -    -    -     -     18.13
25. Claret,.......17.11 .',
       Ditto.......16.32
       Ditto,.......14.08'
       Ditto,......12.91
               Average,     ....  15.10
26. Malmsey Madeira,.....16.40
27. Lunel,    -    -    -    ....  15.52
28. Shiraz,.......15.52
29. Syracuse,.......15.28
30. Sauterne,......14.22
31. Burgundy,     ......  16.60
       Ditto,.....-     15.22
       Ditto,.......14.53
       Ditto,     ......     11.95
               Average,     -     -     -     -   14.57
32. Hock,.......14.37
       Ditto,.......13.00
       Ditto, (old in cask,)  -                    8.88
               Average,     -     -     -    -  12.08
33. Nice,.......14.63
34. Barsac,.......13.86
35. Tent,   ....               .13.30
                          R 
190
36. Champaign, (still,)
      Ditto, (sparkling,)
      Ditto, (red,) -
      Ditto, (ditto,)   -
               Average,
37. Red Hermitage,
38. Yin de Grave,  -    -
      Ditto,      ....
               Average,
39. Frontignac,   -     -     -     -
40. Cote Rotie,
41. Gooseberry wine,  -
42. Oi'ange wine,—average of six sampl
      by a London manufacturer,
43. Tokay,   -     -    --   -
44. Elder wine,   -
45. Cider, highest average,
    Ditto, lowest average,
46. Perry, average of four samples, -
47. Mead,.....
48. Ale, (Burton,)   -
    Ditto, (Edinburgh,)
    Ditto, (Dorchester,)  -
               Average,
49. Brown Stout,    -
50. London Porter, average,
51. London Small Beer, average,
52. Brandy,      ....
53. Rum,.....
54. Gin,    -
55. Scotch Whiskey,
56. Irish ditto,   ....
es made
13.80
12.80
12.56
11.30
12.61
12.32
13.94
12.80
1.5.27
12.79
12.32
11.84

11.26
 9.88
 9.87
 9.87
 5.21
 7.26
 7.32
 8.88
 6.20
 5.56
 6.87
 6.80
 4.20
 1.28
53.39
53.68
51.60
54.32
53.90
No. III.
  In the first chapter, it is stated that drunkenness  pre-
vails to a much greater degree in northern than in southern 
191
latitudes.  While  making  this observation,  I had only in
view the countries north of the equator; and, so far as they
are concerned, it  is perfectly correct.  I should, however,
have mentioned, that, as we proceed south of the line, the
vice will be found to increase, the nearer we approach the
antarctic circle.   To use the words of Montesquieu,  " Go
from the equator  to our pole, and you will  find drunken-
ness increasing together with the degree of latitude.   Go
from the same equator  to  the opposite pole, and you will
find drunkenness  travelling south, as on this side it travels
towards the north."
                       No. IV.

                Adulteration of Wine.

  " On the 17th of January, the  passengers by the High-
flyer coach from the north, dined, as usual, at Newark. A
bottle of Port wine was ordered; on tasting which, one of
the passengers observed that it had an unpleasant flavour,
and begged that it might  be changed.  The waiter took
away the  bottle, poured  into  a  fresh decanter half the
wine which had been  objected to, and  filled it up  from
another bottle.  This he took into tlie room, and the great-
er part was drunk by the passengers, who,  after the coach
had set out towards Grantham, were seized with extreme
sickness;  one  gentleman in particular, who had taken
more  of the  wine than the others, it was  thought would
have died, but has since recovered. The  half of the bottle
of wine sent out of the passengers' room,  was put aside for
the purpose of mixing negus.  In the evening, Mr. Bland,
of Newark, went into the hotel, and drank a glass or two
of wine and water.  He returned home at his usual hour,
and went to bed; in the middle of the night, he was taken
so ill as to induce Mrs. Bland to send for his brother, an apo-
thecary in the town; but before that gentleman arrived, he
was dead.  An  inquest was held, and the jury, after the
                        R 2 
192
fullest inquiry, and  the examination  of  the surgeons  by
whom the body was opened, returned a virdict of—Died
by Poison."—Monthly Magazine for March, 1811.

  "The most dangerous adulteration of wine, is by some
preparations of lead, which possess the property of stopping
the progress of acescence of wine, and also of rendering
white wines, when muddy, transparent.   I  have good rea-
son to state, that lead is certainly employed for this pur-
pose.   The effect is very rapid; and there appears to be
no other method known, of rapidly recovering ropy wines.
Wine merchants persuade  themselves  that  the  minute
quantity of lead employed for that purpose  is perfectly
harmless, and that no atom  of lead remains in  the wine.
Chemical analysis proves the contrary; and the practice
of clarifying spoiled white wines, by means of lead,  must
be pronounced highly deleterious."—Accum. 
INDEX.
                                                 Pa^e
Alcohol, the intoxicating principle of all liquors,    -  51
        its action differs from that of Opium,    -     83
Alexander the Great, died of Drunkenness,   -    -  15
Amurath IV. made Smoking a capital offence,    -     70
Ardent Spirits, Drunkenness modified by,     -       51
              varieties of,      ...    -  19,53
Armstrong, Dr., his Remarks on Diseases of the Brain, 113
                            Delirium Tremens,    130
Arrack, a Spirituous Liquor long known in the East,   13

Bangue, possesses intoxicating properties,
Bardolph, his nose,   -     -    -    -    -
Beer known to the Egyptians, -    -
            in the interior of Africa,  -
Belladonna, given by the Scots to the Danes,
           used to adulterate Malt Liquors,
            two cases where it was swallowed,
Bitters, often dangerous remedies,
Bligh, Captain, his privations, -
Blood and Breath, State of,  -    -    -
Bonosus, hanged himself in a fit of despair,
Brain, State of,......
Brande, Mr., his Table,  .    -     -     -
Brandy,     ......
  180
  116
   12
   ib.
   20
   56
  181
  112
  176
  114
   16
  113
  188
19,53 
194
                                                 Pnge
Brodie, Mr., his opinion regarding the absorption of
       Alcohol,.......85

Camphor, possesses intoxicating properties,  -    -   182
Carbonic Acid, possesses intoxicating properties,  172,183
Cardinal Santa Croce' introduced Tobacco into Italy,     69
Catherine de  Medicis, the inventor of Snuff*,  -    -    ib.
Chardin,  Extract from his Travels,    ...      65
Chewing,........76
Claret, the most wholesome of Wines,      -     -     171
Cocculus Indicus, used to intoxicate Fishes,           20
                        adulterate .Malt Liquors,      57
Coke,  Sir Edward, his judicial opinion,  -     -     -  149
Coleridge, Mr., his case,.....80
Corpulency,........120
Cornaro,  Extract from,.....123

Darwin, Dr.,  averse to blooding in Drunkenness,   -    98
            opposes the sudden discontinuance of
               Liquors,    ,.....154
Delirium Tremens,   -    -    -   . -     .    .    127
Demosthenes used Cold Water as a stimulus,  -     -    27
Don Gio Maria Bertholi, Case of,     ...    144
Double Vision, Cause of,    .    -    -     .     -    91
Dreams,........134
Drunkard, Choleric.......47
          Melancholy,.....44
          Nervous,......46
          Periodical,.....48
          Phlegmatic,......45
          Sanguineous,.....43
          Surly,.......45
Drunkards, Sleep of, --.--.    13J
           Spontaneous Combustion of,     -     .  140
           Advice to determined,    -     -    .    169
Drunkenness, Causes of,.....22
             modified by Temperament,   -    -     42
             modified  by the Inebriating Agent,   -    51
             Physiology of,                         88 
195
*.                                               Page
Drunkenness, Method of curing the fit of,     -  ..  -   97
             Pathology of,     ....    106
             judicially considered,     -     -     -  149
             Method'of curing the habit of,    -    153
             in Nurses,     .....  173

Eason, Rebecca, Inquest on her Body,    -    -     68
Ears, Ringing in the, Cause of,    -    ...   93
Edgeworth, Mr., his case,.....80
Elevation of Spirits, Cause of,     ....   93
Emaciation,    .......     119
Epilepsy,    -     -......120
Ethers, possess intoxicating properties,    -    -    183
Eyes, State of,.......115

Fontenelle  used Coffee as a stimidus,  ...     27

Gin,........20,53
Gout,.........117
Grog, Origin of the term,.....170

Hale, Sir Matthew, rejects the plea of Drunkenness,  150
Haller used Cold Water as a stimulus,      -    -     97
Hammer, Von,  Extract from his History of  the As-
      sassins,   .......     57
Hannibal's army ruined by intemperance,     -    -   14
Heat and Flushing, Cause of,                        92
Heart, Palpitation of,   -    -     -     --    -118
Hernandez  de Toledo introduced Tobacco into Eu-
rope,
69
Hibiscus Saldarissa,......20
Hobbes used Tobacco as a stimulus,                  27
Hyoscyamus,.......56
Hysteria,........119
Innocent, Pope, renewed Pope Urban's Bull,
70 
196
James I., his " Counterblaste to Tobacco,"   -     -   70
Johnson, Dr., used Tea as a stimulus,  ...     26

Kinninmouth,  Patrick,  tried  for  Blasphemy and
    Adultery,   .......    151

Langsberg, Matthew, his saying,                     16
Liquors, Cure of Drunkenness from,  ...     97
         cannot always be discontinued with safety,  154
         not always hurtful,.....176
Liver, State of,.......107

Mackenzie, Sir George, says that the plea of Drunk-
     enness is never received in extenuation of crime,  150
Madness,    -     -     -    -    »•-    -     -125
Mahomet forbade Wine to his followers,             14
Malt Liquors, Drunkenness modified by,     -     -   56
Mary Clues, Case of,......142
Mead, the favourite drink of the Saxons,     -     -   13
Melancholy,.......124
Mithridates, his body powerfully resisted Poisons,  -   67
Montesquieu, Quotations from,  ....  60,166


Nepenthes,........20
Nervii, refused to drink Wine,   :                   16
Newton  used Tobacco as a stimulus,     ...   27
Nightmare,.......134
Nitrous  Oxide,.......76

 Old Age, premature,......122
 Opium,  Drunkenness modified by,       ...   60
         used by the late Dutchess of Gordon,    -     62
         its action differs from that of Alcohol,     -   83
         Method of curing Drunkenness from,    -    101
 Opium-Eater, English, his Confessions,   ...   61
 Orfila, M., his Experiments,    ....     83 
197
                                                Page
Pans, Dr., Excerpt from his Pharmacologia,  -    -  185
Peganum Harmala,   ......      20
Perspiration, State of,   -    -    -     -    .    .  115
Pitcairn, Dr., and the Highland Chieftain,  -    -     162
Plugging,.......       76
Porter,........20,56
Portland Powder,.......112
Punch,     .--.'-...     170


Raleigh, Sir Walter, introduced Tobacco into Eng-
      land,     .......70
Rum,........20,53


Sack of Shakspeare, supposed to have been Sherry,     56
Sleep-walking,.....•   -    -  137
Smoking,       .......74
Snuffing,.......-   72
Spartans held Ebriety in abhorrence,  -               16
Spirits, their adulteration,.....18
       their varieties,.....19,53
Spurzheim, his opinion of the sudden discontinuance
      of Liquors,     -     -    -     -    -    -  154
Staggering and Stammering, Causes of,     -    .      92
Stanhope, Lord, his remarks on Snuffing,     -     -   72
Stomach, State of,    -    -    -    -  .   -    -     109


Temperament, Drunkenness modified by,     -    -   42
Tobacco, Drunkenness modified by,   -     -    -     69
         method of curing Drunkenness from,     -  103
Tremors,   ..------    117
 Trotter, Dr., his advice called in question,    -     -  154


Ulcers,    ..-•----     123
 Urban VIII. excommunicated Snuffers,               70
C: 
198
Vertigo, Cause of,......89
Voltaire used Coffee as a stimulus,                 27


Whisky,........19,53
Wines, their adulteration,    •    -   -    -    18,192
      Drunkenness modified by,                 55
"9t  l  ^ 
 
i   A/      [       \
10  11*1111 IVNOIIVN     1NI3I01W iO  A a V a « I 1 IVNOIiVN   3N I D 10
                                 *         A   V   *.           A           s
/

LIBRARY  OF  MEDICINE     NATIONAL LIBRARY OF  MEDICINE   NATION
LIBRARY  OF  MEDICINE     NATIONAL  LIBRARY  OF  MEDICINE   NATION
                                                                                     I       \
10  * IV It I 1  IVNOIIVN      ] N I 3 I 0 1W IO  JklVllll  IVNOIiVN    ] N I 3 I a

                                                                                     [       /
^
 
 
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE
NLN omaTaob fl
NLM041392068