96. If wine does not agree, and if she require a stimulant, a tumblerful either of home-brewed ale or of Burton bitter ale ought, instead of water, to be taken at dinner. But remember, if she drink either beer or porter, she must take a great deal of out-door exercise; otherwise it will probably make her bilious. If she be inclined to be bilious, wine is superior to either beer or porter.
91. Brandy ought never to be taken by a young wife but as a medicine, and then but rarely, and only in cases of extreme exhaustion. It would be a melancholy and gloomy prospect for her to drink brandy daily; she would, in all probability, in a short time become a confirmed drunkard. There is nothing, when once regularly taken, more fascinating and more desperately dangerous than brandy-drinking. It has caused the destruction of tens of thousands both of men and of women!
98. A wife ought not, if she feel low, to fly on every occasion to wine to raise her spirits, but should try the effects of a walk in the country, and
“Draw physic from the fields in draughts of vital air.”[[21]]
99. An excitable wife is a weakly wife: “excitement is the effect of weakness, not of strength.” Wine in large quantities will not strengthen, but, on the contrary, will decidedly weaken; the more the wine, the greater the debility and the greater the excitement—one follows the other as the night the day. A person who drinks much wine is always in a state of excitement, and is invariably weak, low, and nervous, and frequently barren. Alcoholic stimulants in excess are “a delusion and a snare,” and are one of the most frequent causes of excitement, and therefore both of weakness and of barrenness. Alcohol, pure and undiluted, and in excess, is a poison, and is ranked among the deadly poisons; if a person were to drink at one draught half a pint of undiluted alcohol it would be the last draught he or she would ever, in this world, drink,—it would be as surely fatal as a large dose of either arsenic or strychnine! Brandy, whisky, gin, and wine are composed of alcohol as the principal ingredient; indeed, each and all of them entirely owe their strength to the quantity of alcohol contained therein. Brandy, whisky, gin, and wine, without the alcohol, would, each one of them, be as chip in porridge—perfectly inert. Brandy and wine, the former especially, contain large proportions of alcohol, and both the one and the other, in excess, either prevents a woman from conceiving, and thus makes her barren, or if she do conceive, it poisons the unborn babe within her; and it either makes him puny and delicate, or it downright kills him in the womb, and thus causes a miscarriage. If he survive the poison, and he be born alive, he is usually, when born, delicate and undersized; if such a one be suckled by such a mother, he is subjected, if the mother can nurse him, which in such cases she rarely can, to a second course of poisoning; the mother’s milk is poisoned with the alcohol, and the poor unfortunate little wretch, having to run the gantlet in the womb and out of the womb, pines and dwindles away, until at length he finds a resting-place in the grave! If you wish to make a dog small, give him, when he is a puppy, gin; the alcohol of the gin will readily do it: this is a well-known fact, and is, by dog-fanciers, constantly practiced. If you desire, in like manner, to make a Tom Thumb of a baby, give him the milk of a mother or of a wet-nurse who imbibes, in the form of wine or of brandy or of gin, alcohol in quantities, and the deed is done! Gin-drinking nursing mothers, it is well known, have usually puny children; indeed, the mother drinking the gin is only another way of giving gin to the babe—an indirect instead of a direct route, both leading to the same terminus. Brandy was formerly sold only by the apothecary; brandy is a medicine—a powerful medicine—and ought only to be prescribed as a medicine; that is to say, but seldom, in small and in measured quantities at a time, and only when absolutely necessary: now it is resorted to on every occasion as a panacea for every ill! If taken regularly, and in quantities, as unfortunately it frequently now is, it becomes a desperate poison—a pathway leading to the grave! It is utterly impossible for any person to hold in the mouth, for five minutes at a time, a mouthful of neat brandy without experiencing intense suffering: if it has this fearful effect on the mouth, what effect must this burning fluid, when taken in quantities, have upon the stomach? Injury, most decided injury to the stomach, and, through the stomach, disease and weakness to the remainder of the body! Brandy is a wonderful and powerful agent: brandy has the effect, if taken in excess and for a length of time, of making the liver as hard as a board. Brandy in large quantities, and in the course of time, has the power of making the body marvelously big—as big again; but not with firm muscle and strong sinew, not with good blood and wholesome juices—nothing of the kind; but of filling it full, even to bursting, with water! Brandy has the power of taking away a giant’s strength, and of making him as helpless as a little child! Habitual brandy-drinking poisons the very streams of life! It would take more time and space than I have to spare to tell of the wonderful powers of brandy; but unfortunately, as a rule, its powers are more those of an angel of darkness than those of an angel of light! If the above statements be true (and they cannot be contravened), they show the folly, the utter imbecility, and the danger, both to mother and to babe, of dosing a wife, be she strong or be she delicate, and more especially if she be delicate, with large quantities either of wine or of brandy. Brandy, gin, and whisky act on the human economy very much alike; for, after all, it is the quantity of alcohol contained in each of them that gives them their real strength and danger. I have selected brandy as the type of all of them, as brandy is now the fashionable remedy for all complaints, and, unfortunately, in too many instances the habit of drinking it imperceptibly but rapidly increases, until at length, in many cases, that which was formerly a teaspoonful becomes a tablespoonful, and eventually a wineglassful, with what result I have earnestly endeavored faithfully to portray. Avoid, then, the first step in regular brandy-drinking: it is the first step that ofttimes leads to danger, and eventually to destruction!
100. I am quite convinced that one cause of barrenness among ladies of the present day is excessive wine-drinking. This is an age of stimulants, and the practice is daily increasing. A delicate lady is recommended to take three or four glasses of wine daily. It seems for the moment to do her good, and whenever she feels low she flies to it again. The consequence is, that she almost lives upon wine, and takes but little else besides! Who are the fruitful women? Poor women who cannot afford to drink stimulants; for instance, poor Irish women and poor curates’ wives, who have only, principally, water and milk and buttermilk to drink.
101. There is decidedly, among the higher ranks, more barrenness than formerly, and one cause of it, in my opinion, is the much larger quantity of wine now consumed than in the olden times. Many ladies now drink as many glasses of wine in one day as their grandmothers drank in a week; moreover, the wineglasses of the present day are twice the size of old-fashioned wineglasses; so that half a dozen glasses of wine will almost empty a bottle; and many ladies now actually drink, in the day, half a dozen glasses of wine!
102. In the wine-growing and wine-drinking country of France, barrenness prevails to a fearful extent; it has become there a serious consideration and a State question. Wine is largely consumed in France by ladies as well as by gentlemen. The usual and everyday quantity of wine allowed at dinner at the restaurants of Paris, for each lady, is half a wine quart bottle-full—a similar quantity to that allowed for each gentleman. Where a gentleman and a lady are dining together, and have a bottle of wine between them, it is probable that the former might consume more than his own share of the wine; but whether he does or not, the quantity the lady herself drinks is sadly too much either for her health or for her fruitfulness. I am, moreover, quite convinced that the quantity of wine—sour wine—consumed by French wives is not only very antagonistic to their fertility, but likewise to their complexions.
103. Wine was formerly a luxury, it is now made a necessary of life. Fruitful women, in olden times, were more common than they are now. Riches, and consequently wine, did not then so much abound, but children did much more abound. The richer the person, the fewer the children.
104. Wine is now oftentimes sucked in with a mother’s milk! Do not let me be misunderstood; wine and brandy, in certain cases of extreme exhaustion, are, even for very young children, most valuable remedies; but I will maintain that both wine and brandy require the greatest judgment and skill in administering, and do irreparable mischief unless they are most carefully and judiciously prescribed. Wine ought to be very rarely given to the young; indeed, it should be administered to them with as much care and as seldom as any other dangerous or potent medicine.