Having thus satisfied themselves of the trustworthiness of the new test, and, indeed, as compared with distillation, of its superior sensitiveness, they proceeded to inquireWhat becomes of alcohol in the body?'

The solution was again prepared, of definite strength, and a given quantity was put into a glass tube of a certain diameter. When the breath, charged with alcohol, passed through the liquor, it changed from red to green, thus furnishing a fixed standard of comparison. Quickly as the conversion of colour was complete, one tube was exchanged for another, until no further change could be perceived. Thus, in one experiment, where a man concludes at 10-30 his breakfast, with a litre of red wine (11th French pint), of ten per cent. of alcohol, his breath at 12 and 1 o'clock P.M. converts a centimètre of the test liquid in two minutes; at 2 P.M. in four minutes; at 4 o'clock in ten minutes; at 5 P.M. in fifteen minutes; whilst at 6 but a partial change is visible; at 7, none at all. This evinces how gradually, but surely, the poison was cast out of the system.

The urine being subjected to the same test, at the same periods, sixty grammes at noon yield alcoholic vapour sufficient to transmute the colour of sixteen cubic centimètres of the solution; at 2 o'clock the same quantity changed the colour of fifteen cubic centimètres : at 4 P.M. twelve; at 6 P.M. ten; at 8 o'clock four; at 10 P.M. one. At midnight the reaction was hardly perceptible. After the use of even a bottle of weak wine, the kidneys would secrete alcohol for the long period of fourteen hours.

The skin is also proved to be an organ for the elimination of the poison. Even an intoxicated dog (an animal not remarkable for the activity of its perspiration) was found to exhale alcohol, when placed in a glass case, with its head out.

Other tissues and organs of the body likewise yielded alcohol, especially the liver and the brain; though, as might be expected, in very different proportions when the alcohol was directly injected into the blood, and when absorbed into the stomach.

Flesh yielded a less ratio of alcohol than blood.

In the case of a strong man, who died thirty-two hours after drinking a pint of brandy, and notwithstanding that emetics brought back part of the half-pint of alcohol, the spirit was detected in abundance, not only in brain and liver, but in the blood.

Under the head of Applications to Physiology,' our authors ask, What is the mode of action of an aliment?' (P. 132.) Citing the experiment in which, after the use of thirty grammes of alcohol, the poison was found in the breath after eight hours, and

A centimètre is the 0.39371 of an English inch. A cubic centimètre is 06102 cubic inch. A gramme is 15 44579 grains troy.

The Alcoholic Alphabet.

51

in the urine after fourteen, they say: No aliment, plastic or respiratory, ingested, except in excess, escapes a normal transformation; it is never found unchanged in the products of excretion, being either completely metamorphosed in the organism, or partially converted into fatty matter. Our authors completely vindicate the old definitions of food and poison given by the Temperance teachers. They show most lucidly, for example, that moderate excitement is simply a lower degree of the same kind of abnormal stimulation which is known as inebriation, and that alcohol never gives force, but merely calls it out.

"Facts establish, from a physiological point of view, a line of demarcation between alcohol and foods. These latter restore the forces, without the organism betraying, by disturbed functions or by outward agitation, the labour of reparation, which is accomplished silently in the woof of the tissues. Alcohol, on the other hand, immediately provokes, even in a moderate dose, an excitement which extends through the entire economy.'

At p. 142 they endorse the following description of Michel Levy, given in his treatise on 'Hygiène' (Paris, 1857), as to the essential action of the poison :

The influence of alcohol upon the nervous system, and particularly upon the brain, is manifest by a progressive but constant series of symptoms, which, in different degrees of intensity, are reproduced in all individuals. These constitute a true poisoning (intoxication), and this morbid state is exhibited under three phases (1) SUR-EXCITATION, (2) PERTURBATION, (3) ABOLITION of the cerebro-spinal functions.'

Pleasure secured by such methods may be more or less philosophical or brutish, according to the degree of action; but surely in a moral and Christian point of view, the sur-excitation is not less really illicit because it is more refined and more seductive?

MM. Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy, at page 229, give the following résumé of their results, which may be called The Alcoholic Aphabet:'—

A.—Alcohol, ingested into the stomach, applied to the skin, or introduced as vapour into the lungs, is absorbed by the veins, and carried by the blood into all the tissues.

B.-The injection of alcohol produces upon animals an intoxication that is marked by a progressive series of functional disturbances and alterations, the intensity of which corresponds with the quantity of alcohol absorbed. C.-It manifests itself at first by a general excitement; but by-and-by the respiration and circulation are relaxed and the temperature lowered.

D. The muscular power is weakened and extinguished; always beginning at the extremities.

E. The insensibility gradually extends to the centres (as in dead drunkenness). F.-The heart is the last to die (ultimum moriens).

G.-The time that elapses between the beginning of intoxication and death varies from forty-five minutes to three hours.

H.-When the dose is not sufficient to induce death, the excitability of the nervous system returns after a time, varying with circumstances.

F 2

I.-The

I. The arterial blood remains rutilant, and preserves all its apparent qualities nearly up to the moment of death.

J.-Alcoholized blood contains, during life and after death, a great number of free fatty globules, visible even to the naked eye.

K. The pathological alterations are very vivid inflammation of the mucous membrane of the stomach; the accumulation of blood in the right chamber of the heart and the large veins; congestion of the meninges, and especially of the lungs.

L.-All solids or liquids in union with alcohol are easily separated by distillation, or proportionally, by the method of volumes.

M.-Alcohol, taken by the stomach, accumulates in the liver and the substance of the brain; if in the blood it is represented as 1·0, in the brain it is 1:34, in the liver 1'48.

N.-Diluted alcohol produces the same effect when introduced by injection into the veins as when taken into the stomach, but operates more rapidly. The animal succumbs in less than twenty minutes.

O.-Alcohol, injected into the veins, spreads to all the tissues, but accumulates most largely in the brain; being in the liver, 175; in the cerebral matter, 3. P.-Death by alcoholic poisoning is due primarily to its special action upon the nervous centres.

Q.-After the ingestion of a small dose of brandy (25 grammes=360 grains), the blood continues to manifest the presence of alcohol by chemical reactions for many hours.

R.-We never found, in either the blood or tissues, any of the derivatives of alcohol (such as aldehyde or acetic acid).

S.-Only in the stomach was found a trace of acetic acid, generated from alcohol by the ferment of the gastric juice.

T-Alcohol is rejected from the vital economy by divers systems of elimination, by the lungs, the skin, and the kidneys.

U.-These organs are found to eliminate alcohol after the ingestion of doses very small (plus petites).

V. The elimination lasts many hours, even after an ingestion very moderate. The kidneys continue longest to reject it.

X.-Aldehyde (a derivative of alcohol) introduced into the stomach is readily found in the blood.

Y.-The aldehyde is, in great part, eliminated; in part transformed into acetic acid.

Z.-Alcohol has the same action, and produces the same effects, upon men and upon the lower animals.

These statements tempt to comment, but space forbids, and we must hasten to translate the Conclusions,' to which these experimenters have been conducted; and which may fairly be called The Seven Pillars of Temperance :'

6

1. Alcohol is not food.

2. Alcohol is a special modifier of the nervous system. It acts, in a feeble dose, as an excitant; in a larger, as a stupefiant.

3. Alcohol is never transformed, never destroyed, in the organism.

4. Alcohol accumulates, by a sort of elective affinity, in the brain, and in the liver.

5. Alcohol is eliminated from the organism in totality and in nature. The channels of elimination are: the Lungs, the Skin, and, above all, the Kidneys. 6. Alcohol has a pathogenetic influence, material and direct, upon the development of many functional disturbances and organic alterations of the brain, the liver, and the kidneys.

7. Spirituous drinks owe to the alcohol they contain their common properties and the speciality of their effects. The use of fermented and distilled liquors is often noxious: it should be always very restrained; it should never be tolerated except in exceptional circumstances. (P. 233.)

Our authors, nevertheless, are not teetotalers; they go for light

wines, on the principle, we suppose, that a minim of evil is a modicum of good! Their experiments, however, are none the worse that their practice lags behind their theory, which is no uncommon event in this disjointed world of human nature. We rejoice, once more, that Science has been made again to confirm the decisions of Experience. In this manner, during the last thirty years, Providence has compelled Science to lay successive offerings upon the altar of Temperance; and often, as in the present instance, through the medium of the reluctant hands and unsubmissive wills of a disobedient priesthood.

ART. IV.-1. The Coal-fields of Great Britain; their History, Structure, and Duration. With Notices of the Coal-fields of other parts of the World. By Edward Hull, B.A., F.G.S. London: Stanford, 1861.

2. History of Coal, Coke, and Coal-fields. By. W. Fordyce. London: 1860.

IN great, and the probable injury to public

the year 1306, a great alarm was felt in England respecting

health from the smoke which issued from it into the atmosphere. The City of London petitioned the Parliament, and both Houses, sharing in the panic, respectfully addressed the king, Edward I., urging the prohibition of the common use of coal, and the destruction of all furnaces and kilns where any person should continue to burn it. The royal prerogative was exercised against the mineral; but King, Lords, and Commons failed to arrest the progress of the grand English innovator, to whose agency we are indebted for very much of our manufacturing and commercial greatness. Coal had not been much used as an article of common fuel prior to the period referred to. It is not accurately ascertained when it was first employed. Before the Christian era it is scarcely mentioned by any writer except Theophrastus, who lived 238 B.C. From the brief account which he gives of it, there is some reason to believe that its properties were known, and that it was sometimes used by smiths. The first thousand of our era witnessed years few very attempts to excavate the treasures of fossil fuel. Some have supposed that the ancient Britons had a faint idea of its uses, and that the Romans in Britain tried their hand at mining. In Roman remains discovered at Manchester, a few cinders have been seen, and near Wigan there is a fragment of a 'coal mine referable to the same period. In the Chronicles of Anglo-Saxon monks, there is satisfactory evidence that coal was then, to a small extent, employed for household fires. The Normans did not reckon the black mineral a pot of money' in the rich England which they con

quered.

quered. It is not until the year 1259 that we read of any law affecting this great treasure. In that year Henry III. granted a privilege to certain of his subjects in Newcastle-on-Tyne to dig coals. Seven years afterwards, they began to be exported. But when tried in domestic fires, and in public manufactories, the smoke had well-nigh proscribed the use of this valuable production of the earth. Utility at last disarmed prejudice; and we find that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, several mines were wrought, and in the early part of the eighteenth century it was employed in the manufacture of iron both at Coalbrooke Dale and in Scotland. The consumption was for a time very small. In the year 1670, only 200,000 chaldrons were used in England, and nearly one hundred years later, there were only some 500,000 chaldrons consumed. So ignorant were scientific men, at that time, of the stores in the earth beneath their feet in this island, that apprehensions were entertained lest the supply should be very soon exhausted. The author of a Political Survey of Great Britain,' published in 1774, sought to allay the fears of his countrymen by assuring them that the mines then wrought would last for a series of years.

The science of geology has opened up the coal measures, and the invention of steam engines by Watt necessitated extensive mining; while the invention of the safety lamps, by Stephenson* and Davy respectively, rendered working in mines safe to the colliers employed. The production of coal in Great Britain and Ireland is now upwards of 70,000,000 tons annually, of which about six millions of tons are shipped to foreign ports. All the others are consumed at home.

The practical sagacity of George Stephenson suggested the probable origin of coal. Standing, on one occasion, with the eminent geologist, Dr. Buckland, a railway train whizzed past. What drives that train, think you?' said Stephenson. The doctor replied that it was very likely one of his host's own engines. But the thoughts of the father of railways had gone much farther back, and he stated that it was the rays of the sun, absorbed by the trees of bygone ages, and now burning as fuel, that gave, through a bucket of water, the greatest power on earth. This has been beautifully rendered by his illustrious son, Robert Stephenson, in the following words: We are living in an age when the pent-up rays of that sun which shone upon the great carboniferous forests of past ages are being liberated to set in motion our mills and factories, to carry us with great rapidity over the earth's surface, and to propel our fleets, regardless of wind and tide, with unerring regularity over the ocean.'

Stephenson's safety lamp, though long ignored, is now recommended as more safe than Sir Humphry Davy's. See report on the late awful explosion at Risca.

The