"As a restorative, a means of refreshment when the powers of life are exhausted, of giving animation and energy where man has to struggle with days of sorrow, as a means of correction and compensation where misproportion occurs in nutrition, wine is surpassed by no product of nature or of art. * In no part of Germany do the apothecaries' establishments bring so low a price as in the rich cities on the Rhine; for there wine is the universal medicine of the healthy as well as the sick. It is considered as milk for the aged."

Pereira writes as follows concerning beer:

"Considered dietetically, beer possesses a threefold property; it quenches thirst; it stimulates, cheers, and if taken in sufficient quantity, intoxicates; lastly, it nourishes or strengthens. * * * Beer proves a refreshing and salubrious drink (if taken in moderation,) and an agreeable and valuable stimulus and support to those who have to undergo much bodily fatigue."

In the article "Diet," in Chambers's Encyclopædia,* the writer says:—

"The laboring man, who can hardly find bread and meat enough to preserve the balance between the formation and decay of his tissues, finds in alcohol an agent which, if taken in moderation, enables him, without disturbing his health, to dispense with a certain quantity of food, and yet keeps up the weight and strength of his body."

* Chambers's Encyclopædia, Vol. iii., p. 552. Art. Diet. See also the Anatomy of Drunkenness, by Dr. Macnish, p. 225.

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Nay, at the close of Dr. Carpenter's work on the Physiology of Temperance and Total Abstinence, a work which is the scientific manual of the Prohibitionists,-occurs the following passage. He is arguing upon a thesis which he expresses as follows, viz.: that "whilst the habitual use of alcoholic liquors, even in the most moderate amount, is likely, (except in a few rare cases,) to be injurious, great benefit may be derived in the treatment of disease, from the medicinal use of alcohol in appropriate cases." And he comes finally to speak of "a class of individuals, who," he who," he says, can scarcely be regarded as subjects of disease, but in whom the conditions are essentially different from those of health." "These are such," he continues, "as, from constitutional debility, or early habits, or some other cause that does not admit of rectification, labor under an habitual deficiency of appetite and digestive power, even when they are living under circumstances generally most favorable to vigor, and when there is no indication of disordered action in any organ, all that is needed being a slight increase in the capacity for preparing the aliment which the body really needs. Experience affords ample evidence that there are such cases, especially among those engaged in avocations which

involve a good deal of mental activity; and that, with the assistance of a small but habitual allowance of alcoholic stimulants, a long life of active exertion may be sustained, whilst the vital powers would speedily fail without their aid, not for the want of direct support from them, but for the want of the measure of food which the system really needs, and which no other means seems so effectual in enabling it to appropriate. * * * To withhold the assistance of alcoholic stimulants, (it is in their very mildest form, such as that of bitter ale, that they are most beneficial,) would often be to condemn the individuals in question to a life-long debility, incapacitating them from all activity of exertion in behalf of themselves or others, and rendering them susceptible to a variety of other causes of disease. For it seems to be the peculiar character of this condition, that no other medicine can supply what is wanting, with the same effect as a small quantity of an alcoholic beverage, taken with the principal meal of the day."

This extract, from Carpenter, leads us to consider now, what is a stimulant? It is often alleged against alcohol that it is stimulating; that it is even more stimulating than almost any other substance in ordinary use for diet. But what is a stimulant? Is a

substance intrinsically deleterious for diet because it is stimulating? Is it justly a reproach to a man that he uses stimulants? Let us not be deceived by words. Let us probe this question. And first, for a brief, clear, sharp, incisive definition of the term "stimulant." This has been well expressed thus:

"Stimulants are only energetic stimuli. Now all living acts require stimuli,—the eye light, the egg and seed heat or heat and moisture, the stomach food, sometimes condiments. It is hard to draw the line. Ninon de l'Enclos said her soup made her tipsy, and convalescents have been said to get drunk on a beefsteak. That which is a stimulus to one person is a stimulant to another. The last term. means only a more concentrated form of stimulus, or one which acts more vigorously than ordinary stimuli, for any reason in itself or in the person."

Mr. Lewes, in the "Westminster Review," * sums up the question concerning alcohol as a stimulant, as follows:

* Westminster Review, No. cxxv., July, 1855, American edition pp. 59, 60. See also the Intellectual Development of Europe, p. 577, by Prof. John W. Draper, concerning the use of food by animals, for the force it contains. Also the able paper by Dr. Edward Smith, On the Actions of Alcohols, printed with the Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. London, 1860.

"Life is only possible under incessant stimulus. Organic processes depend on incessant change, and this change is dependent on stimuli. The stimulus of food, the stimulus of fresh air, the stimulus of exercise, are called natural, beneficial; the stimulus of alcohol seems selected for special reprobation without cause being shown, except that people choose to say it is not natural. How not natural? The phrase can have two significations, and it can have but two: first, that alcohol is not a stimulus which man employs in a state of nature; second, it is not consonant with the nature of his organism. The second is a pure begging of the question; and the first is in flat contradiction with experience. *** No nation known to us has ever passed into the inventive condition of even rudimentary civilization without discovering, and, having discovered, without largely indulging in, the stimulus of alcohol. Man discovers fermentation as he discovers the tea-plant and the coffee-plant.

"Of two things, one; either we must condemn all stimulus, and alcohol, because it is a stimulus; or we must prove that there is something peculiar in the alcoholic stimulus which demarcates it from all others. Here, again, the reader sees the question narrowed and brought within an arena of precise debate. Only two positions are possible; indeed, we may say, only one; for who is mad enough to condemn all stimulus? The ground thus cleared, the fight narrowed to this one point, let us do justice to the strength of our antagonist; let us confess at once that there is a peculiarity in alcohol which justifies in some degree its bad reputation, a peculiarity upon which all the mischief of intoxication depends; one which causes all the miseries so feelingly laid to its door. And what is this peculiarity? Nothing less than the fascination of its virtue, the potency of its effect; were