To evidence of this purely scientific nature might be added, if space could be afforded, a long list of persons who, having indulged in wine for many years, have found benefit from discontinuing the use of it. Most of us have known such instances. I have known several, and I can most truly say, that I have never known an individual in tolerable health who discontinued the use of any stimulant whatever without benefit. We all remember Sydney Smith's strong sentences on this point, scattered through the volume which contains the correspondence of that delicious humorist and wit. "I like London better than ever I liked it before," he writes in the prime of his prime (forty-three years old) to Lady Holland, "and simply, I believe, from water-drinking. Without this, London is stupefaction and inflammation." So has New York become. Again, in 1828, when he was fifty-seven, to the same lady: "I not only was never better, but never half so well; indeed, I find I have been very ill all my life without knowing it. Let me state some of the goods arising from abstaining from all fermented liquors. First, sweet sleep; having never known what sweet sleep was, I sleep like a baby or a plough-boy. If I wake, no needless terrors, no black visions of life, but pleasing hopes and pleasing recollections: Holland House past and to come! If I dream, it is not of lions and tigers, but of Easter dues and tithes. Secondly, I can take longer walks and make greater exertions without fatigue. My understanding is improved, and I comprehend political economy. I see better without wine and spectacles than when I used both. Only one evil ensues from it; I am in such extravagant spirits that I must lose blood, or look out for some one who will bore or depress me. Pray leave off wine: the stomach is quite at rest; no heartburn, no pain, no distention."
I have also a short catalogue of persons who, having long lived innocent of these agreeable drinks, began at length to use them. Dr. Franklin's case is striking. That "water American," as he was styled by the London printers, whose ceaseless guzzling of beer he ridiculed in his twentieth year, drank wine in his sixtieth with the freedom usual at that period among persons of good estate. "At parting," he writes in 1768, when he was sixty-two, "after we had drank a bottle and a half of claret each, Lord Clare hugged and kissed me, protesting he never in his life met with a man he was so much in love with." The consequence of this departure from the customs of his earlier life was ten years of occasional acute torture from the stone and gravel. Perhaps, if Franklin had remained a "water American," he would have annexed Canada to the United States at the peace of 1782. An agonizing attack of stone laid him on his back for three months, just as the negotiation was becoming interesting; and by the time he was well again the threads were gone out of his hands into those of the worst diplomatists that ever threw a golden chance away.
What are we to conclude from all this? Are we to knock the heads out of all our wine-casks, join the temperance society, and denounce all men who do not follow our example? Taking together all that science and observation teach and indicate, we have one certainty: That, to a person in good health and of good life, alcoholic liquors are not necessary, but are always in some degree hurtful. This truth becomes so clear, after a few weeks' investigation, that I advise every person who means to keep on drinking such liquors not to look into the facts; for if he does, he will never again be able to lift a glass of wine to his lips, nor contemplate a foaming tankard, nor mix his evening toddy, nor hear the pop and melodious gurgle of champagne, with that fine complacency which irradiates his countenance now, and renders it so pleasing a study to those who sit on the other side of the table. No; never again! Even the flavor of those fluids will lose something of their charm. The conviction will obtrude itself upon his mind at most inopportune moments, that this drinking of wine, beer, and whiskey, to which we are so much addicted, is an enormous delusion. If the teetotalers would induce some rational being—say that public benefactor, Dr. Willard Parker of New York—to collect into one small volume the substance of all the investigations alluded to in this article,—the substance of Dr. Beaumont's precious little book, the substance of the French professors' work, and the others,—adding no comment except such as might be necessary to elucidate the investigators' meaning, it could not but carry conviction to every candid and intelligent reader that spirituous drinks are to the healthy system an injury necessarily, and in all cases.
The Coming Man, then, so long as he enjoys good health,—which he usually will from infancy to hoary age,—will not drink wine, nor, of course, any of the coarser alcoholic dilutions. To that unclouded and fearless intelligence, science will be the supreme law; it will be to him more than the Koran is to a Mohammedan, and more than the Infallible Church is to a Roman Catholic. Science, or, in other words, the law of God as revealed in nature, life, and history, and as ascertained by experiment, observation, and thought,—this will be the teacher and guide of the Coming Man.
A single certainty in a matter of so much importance is not to be despised. I can now say to young fellows who order a bottle of wine, and flatter themselves that, in so doing, they approve themselves "jolly dogs": No, my lads, it is because you are dull dogs that you want the wine. You are forced to borrow excitement because you have squandered your natural gayety. The ordering of the wine is a confession of insolvency. When we feel it necessary to "take something" at certain times during the day, we are in a condition similar to that of a merchant who every day, about the anxious hour of half past two, has to run around among his neighbors borrowing credit. It is something disgraceful or suspicious. Nature does not supply enough of inward force. We are in arrears. Our condition is absurd; and, if we ought not to be alarmed, we ought at least to be ashamed. Nor does the borrowed credit increase our store; it leaves nothing behind to enrich us, but takes something from our already insufficient stock; and the more pressing our need the more it costs us to borrow.
But the Coming Man, blooming, robust, alert, and light-hearted as he will be, may not be always well. If, as he springs up a mountain-side, his foot slips, the law of gravitation will respect nature's darling too much to keep him from tumbling down the precipice; and, as he wanders in strange regions, an unperceived malaria may poison his pure and vivid blood. Some generous errors, too, he may commit (although it is not probable), and expend a portion of his own life in warding off evil from the lives of others. Fever may blaze even in his clear eyes; poison may rack his magnificent frame, and a long convalescence may severely try his admirable patience. Will the Coming Man drink wine when he is sick? The question is not easily answered.
One valuable witness on this branch of the inquiry is the late Theodore Parker. A year or two before his lamented death, when he was already struggling with the disease that terminated his existence, he wrote for his friend, Dr. Bowditch, "the consumptive history" of his family from 1634, when his stalwart English ancestor settled in New England. The son of that ancestor built a house, in 1664, upon the slope of a hill which terminated in "a great fresh meadow of spongy peat," which was "always wet all the year through," and from which "fogs could be seen gathering towards night of a clear day."[2] In the third generation of the occupants of this house consumption was developed, and carried off eight children out of eleven, all between the ages of sixteen and nineteen. From that time consumption was the bane of the race, and spared not the offspring of parents who had removed from the family seat into localities free from malaria. One of the daughters of the house, who married a man of giant stature and great strength, became the mother of four sons. Three of these sons, though settled in a healthy place and in an innoxious business, died of consumption between twenty and twenty-five. But the fourth son became intemperate,—drank great quantities of New England rum. He did not die of the disease, but was fifty-five years of age when the account was written, and then exhibited no consumptive tendency! To this fact Mr. Parker added others:—
"1. I know a consumptive family living in a situation like that I have mentioned for, perhaps, the same length of time, who had four sons. Two of them were often drunk, and always intemperate,—one of them as long as I can remember; both consumptive in early life, but now both hearty men from sixty to seventy. The two others were temperate, one drinking moderately, the other but occasionally. They both died of consumption, the eldest not over forty-five.
"2. Another consumptive family in such a situation as has been already described had many sons and several daughters. The daughters were all temperate, married, settled elsewhere, had children, died of consumption, bequeathing it also to their posterity. But five of the sons, whom I knew, were drunkards,—some, of the extremest description; they all had the consumptive build, and in early life showed signs of the disease, but none of them died of it; some of them are still burning in rum. There was one brother temperate, a farmer, living in the healthiest situation. But I was told he died some years ago of consumption."
To these facts must be added one more woful than a thousand such,—that Theodore Parker himself, one of the most valuable lives upon the Western Continent, died of consumption in his fiftieth year. The inference which Mr. Parker drew from the family histories given was the following: "Intemperate habits (where the man drinks a pure, though coarse and fiery, liquor, like New England rum) tend to check the consumptive tendency, though the drunkard, who himself escapes the consequences, may transmit the fatal seed to his children."