We cannot understand how the constant absorption and presence of a little food in the blood can do such infinite mischief; and Dr. Barclay's explanation of what philosophy tells us about the moulting of the tissues,' is calculated to excite inextinguishable laughter! His own authority. Dr. Chambers, has truly said, in reference to the comparison of warm water and scalding, one distinguishes in a moment the normal and abnormal;' and we cannot help thinking that a juster comparison would be found between the little and large, or the rare and frequent use of alcohol, in the difference between preliminary diarrhoea and developed cholera, or between a slight and a dangerous attack of fever. At any rate, what we understand the teetotalers to maintain is, that any sensible quantity of alcohol injures, just as a drop of hot water scalds, though a larger measure is required to kill. Phrases and figures of speech, definition and dialectic, however, will never settle that point; but only the facts of experience on which the temperance men profess to found their doctrine. They would not, we imagine, demur to the comparison of the effects of alcohol to rust, which is unquestionably a process of decay, not desiderated in any perfect machinery or organism. As the proverb says, 'Better wear out than rust out;' better employ the mortal body in its allotted functions of use, than iron-mould' the fibres and faculties by sottishness and sensuality. Further on Dr. Barclay says of the publicans who constantly imbibe their drops of diet, that when one of them dies he is actually, as well as metaphorically, rotten.' This is a frightful form of rust, indeed!

Dr. Barclay, like Dr. Lankester, snatches at an absurd comparison between alcoholics and onion, gin and garlic, sherry and shalots. All taint the breath, say they; but shalots and onions are food, therefore alcohol is food! Now is that element of the onion which comes out of the breath really food? On referring to Professor Pereira's books, we find it classed under the head of 'Materia Medica' as an acrid, volatile oil, which quickens the circulation, occasions thirst; passing out of the different excreting organs, it communicates its peculiar smell to the secretions: if the oil be dissipated by boiling, onions and garlic no longer possess any acrid qualities, and then form mild and easily digested aliments; whereas, in the raw state, i. e. with the oil, they are pungent, acrid, difficultly digestible substances.' Tapioca (a species of arrow-root) is an innocent, well-known food-but the tuberous root from which it comes, the Janipha Manihot, is a poisonous plant. So is the potato, but not when boiled. That the distinct qualities of compounds should be ignored under one common name, the poisonous or medical element of a vegetable confounded with its alimentary parts, and that which the body uses, with that which it expels, is an example of mental foggiuess very pitiable'in public teachers.

Sanity of The Friends.'

351

teachers. Their own illustration is fatal to their own argument, since alcohol leaves no substance behind, but is eliminated, like the 'volatile oil' of onion, in totality and in nature.' That which 'taints the breath' can neither be food which repairs the tissue with substance, nor feeds the furnace with fuel; in both cases it is 'an acrid, volatile poison'-a medical, not an alimentive substance. After all, this theory appears to be a plagiarism from these oldworld pagans, who were so fond of assofetida (or stinking gum) in their cookery, that they gave to it the seductive title of Food for the gods! If assafoetida be food, because taken with food, why not alcohol?

6

Strange as are the pranks that Dr. Barclay plays while engaged in what he calls 'philosophy' (which seems to signify, in his use of it, the reasoning from phrases as though they were facts), when he comes to statistics and figures, he transcends himself. At p. 31, for example, in order to prove that teetotal statements are extravagant, he adduces statistics from six asylums, showing an average of 14.36 per cent. of insanity dependent on intemperance.' Who but Dr. Barclay would ever think of inferring, that because some 850 persons are annually put down in the Registrar-General's Return as dying from 'intemperance,' therefore that number represents the whole mortality actually resulting from drinking? Why, Dr. Barclay's 'rotten publicans' are not included! If there be even 15 per cent. of insanity arising from admitted, impossible-to-be-disguised intemperance, we may be sure that a very much larger proportion will be found, by those who closely inquire, to have its origin in drinking. At all events, Dr. Barclay's dispute is not so much with the temperance people as with the great authorities in his own profession. How the facts behind the figures are hidden from his vision may be shown in a couple of instances:

If Lord Shaftesbury's statement were true (that 60 per cent. of insane cases are due, directly and indirectly, to drinking), we should have few such cases among Quakers, the great body of whom are total abstainers. But it is well known that mental alienation is quite as prevalent among Quakers as among the population at large.'-(P. 31.)

From what data does Dr. Barclay gather this? We know a good deal about the Society of Friends, and we entirely discredit the statement. There are facts behind the returns on which our lecturer founds his rash assertion, which he has not examined. Take the case of the York Retreat.' Out of 119 patients there in the early part of 1861, we ascertained that only 77 were Friends; thus compelling a deduction of 33 per cent. from the bare and total figures, which Dr. Barclay would assume to represent Quaker insanity. But these asylums have peculiar principles in their management, without knowing which, the returns would lead (if blindly manipulated) to altogether delusive inferences. For instance, by way of inducement to send the insane to their keeping

carly,

early, one year's maintenance gratis is furnished to a patient who is brought within the first three months of the attack. Friends, notwithstanding some peculiarities, have, owing to their comparative temperance, not only a much higher average of life than the general population,' but an extraordinary exemption from insanity.

6

Dr. George Robinson, of the Bensham Asylum,* has shattered the sophisms of Dr. Barclay by his able and exhaustive analysis of the facts. The returns from 98 asylums in England and Wales exhibit the proportion of 18 per cent. of insanity directly dependent on drinking; but he adds, A very brief examination will suffice to prove that this estimate is greatly below the truth.' He then adduces the facts of 25 asylums, private and pauper mixed, metropolitan and provincial, showing nearly 25 per cent. arising from intemperance. It will be seen,' he adds, 'that these returns refer to intemperance alone one-fourth, and to it in "conjunction with vice" and sensuality, nearly one-third of all the cases of insanity admitted.' In one of the asylums at the east of London, the Lunacy Commissioners' Report states (p. 100), that above 41 per cent. arose from intemperance. These figures take no account of the indirect influence of drinking, or of drinking short of absolute excess, which, in our judgment, issues upon the whole in mental disturbance not less mischievous and real, though less apparent in their development.

In like manner Dr. Barclay strives hard to diminish the estimate of the amount of disease accruing from our drinking habits, and fails as signally as before. He has but one canon of criticism, and that is, not his own experience, but his interpretation of his experience. Now it is not simply needful that a man should have facts. of his own, it is equally necessary that he should know what to do with them. The science of statistics is not merely a mass of heterogeneous facts, heaped together higgledy-piggledy; it consists of facts systematically arranged by an intellect competent to interpret and manipulate them. Any one can cook figures, but the genuine philosopher can alone arrange them into a science, representing the truths and order of nature. Of these qualifications our lecturer evinces an utter absence. As to Peter Bell, the potter, a primrose was a primrose, and nothing more, so to Dr. Barclay, figures are figures, and nothing else! All differences of circumstance, of time, and of place, are ignored, and one set of figures are pretty much the same to him as another-if they but answer the purpose of the moment. In Leicester, for example, he fancies he has arrived, by some careful (but possibly confused) method, at the fact that amongst his poor patients there is not more than 5 per cent.

*On Mental Disorders.' London, 1859. Chap. iv.

of

The Rule of Moderation.

6

353

of sickness due to drink-at which, says he, I confess myself astonished.' Therefore, is his conclusion, Dr. Gordon was utterly wrong when he traced 75 cases out of the 100 in a London hospital to that agent; and another doctor was equally fallacious when he attributed 50 per cent. of the sickness in the Glasgow Infirmary to the use of spirits.

On looking at Dr. Barclay's own tables, however, we find a sufficient refutation of his method and his inference. The per-centage of difference between insanity in one town and another ranges from 6 per cent. in Hull (a drunken seaport), to 24 per cent. in Edinburgh!—so had our figurist himself dwelt in the former place, he would have denounced the statistics of the latter as incredible and exaggerated! He even allows that his own private, middle-class patients have above 13 per cent. of disease dependent on drink'i. e. above 1 in 8-while he puts down only 31 per cent. to his poor patients! This statement by no means confirms the notion on which he insists so stoutly, that drinking is gone out of fashion with the richer classes, and is chiefly confined to the poorer; unless the wealthy are suffering vicariously for the sins of the labouring people.* He appeals to every one that goes into society,' whether there be not an improved state of matters among the upper classes,' having first excellently confuted himself by showing that 100 of his own upper-class patients yielded 11 cases of direct drink disease in 1858, 14 cases in 1859, and 16 cases in 1860. Has Dr. Barclay, we wonder, ever tried to fulfil the religious responsibilities' whereof he speaks; and in reference to those 100 persons especially who constitute the seed-plot for 16 drink-diseased patients annually? He hints that he cannot afford to do so, because that very same argument which is powerful when used by a missionary to a poor debased drunkard, would, from the lips of a doctor, only lead a rich man to consider his physician a fool.'

No doubt Dr. Barclay is quite right in believing that to rebuke corrupt appetite entails the loss both of professional reputation and pecuniary reward. In other words, he here very naïvely allows the truth to peep out-that medical men are under a strong temptation to pander to the appetites of their rich patients, and to sneer at opinions as extreme,' which, acted upon, would limit the area of their professional business so prodigiously. To the poor, degraded class of drinkers, abstinence is necessary, and may be taught by the

* Dr. Barclay will not learn modesty of judgment even from himself. In his old lecture, he states that he had the notes of 11,344 cases' showing the evils resulting from the use of stimulants in only 199, or not quite 13 per 100.' As these cases included many rich, we may separate them, and say that according to Dr. Barclay in 1851, drink-disease amongst the poor was 14 per cent., but in 1861, 5 per cent. Amongst the rich in 1851, only 2 per cent.; but in 1861 not less than 16 per cent.! So much for improved habits' as tested by Leicester statistics!

missionary,

missionary, if not the medico; but to the sixteen per cent., nay, to the whole hundred, who cannot bear the truth to be spoken, Dr. Barclay gives the rule of 'moderation.' If it be inquired what that is? he replies, I cannot tell; but conscience will warn us against the earliest approach to excess.' Will it, indeed! Do the genteel sixteen take the warning; or the honest publicans,' who are actually, as well as metaphorically, rotting? How do they come into the doctor's hands? Do they in sooth believe themselves to be in the power of the demon'? Does conscience speak when the physician is silent? or are the victims not still quite unconscious that they are gravitating with an accelerated intensity as they descend earthwards, while the celestial counter-attractions become feebler as the stars grow more dim and distant?

·

Dr. Barclay has at least performed one stage trick which, with the help of the Saturday Review,' has produced a sort of effect which entitles it to the name of the great-sensation statistic.'

It shows that total abstinence actually predisposes to SOME diseases. This influence is dependent on the state of the nervous system; and, if the philosophical explanation of the action of alcohol on that system be correct, we should find total abstainers more subject to attacks of diseases which invade most easily those whose nervous system is below par.'-(Pp. 23, 24.)

Are the nerves

This is the hypothesis, but what are the facts? of teetotalers below par? If so, would not the whole system suffer, and manifest the fact of diminished power, endurance, and vitality, by a general and proportional inability to reject and expel disease? Is it true, then, either in India, England, or the Continent, that drinking affords a general immunity from disease? Dr. Barclay himself admits that by not using alcohol, except in disease, we are better able to bear up under the ailment, and less of the drug is needed to produce the desired effect.' This is a clear admission that, in health, abstinence from this drug, as from all drugs, allows the vital or reactionary power of the body to accumulate. Why, then, should the teetotalers' nerves be below par in particular? Sir Charles Napier relates his experience thus: "I was tumbled over by the heat with apoplexy. Forty-three others were struck, all Europeans; and all died within three hours, except myself. I do not drink-that is the secret.' Will Dr. Barclay, or the ingenious Saturday men, explain how that healthy condition of the blood and brain, which saves from sun-stroke, should invite fever? Dr. Barclay quotes the Indian statistics as follows: