It follows, then, that if spirits are often perverted to the worst purposes, and capable of producing the greatest calamities, they are also, on particular occasions, of unquestionable benefit. In many affections, both they and wine are of more use than any medicine the physician can administer. Wine is indicated in various diseases of debility. Whenever there is a deficiency of the vital powers, as in the low stages of typhus fever, in gangrene, putrid sore throat, and, generally speaking, whenever weakness, unaccompanied by acute inflammation, prevails, it is capable of rendering the most important services. Used in moderation, it enables the system to resist the attack of malignant and intermittent fevers. It is a promoter of digestion, but sometimes produces acidity, in which case, spirits are preferable. To assist the digestive process in weak stomachs, I sometimes prescribe a tumbler of negus or toddy to be taken after dinner, especially if the person be of a studious habit, or otherwise employed in a sedentary occupation. Such individuals are often benefited by the stimulus communicated to the frame by these cordials. In diarrhœa, dysentery, cholera, cramps, tremors, and many other diseases, both spirits and wine often tell with admirable effect, while they are contra-indicated in all inflammatory affections. Malt liquors also, when used in moderation, are often beneficial. Though the drunkenness produced by their excessive use is of the most stupifying and disgusting kind, yet, when under temperate management, and accompanied by sufficient exercise, they are more wholesome than either spirits or wine. They abound in nourishment, and are well adapted to the labouring man, whose food is usually not of a very nutritive character. The only regret is, that they are so much adulterated by narcotics. This renders them peculiarly improper for persons of a plethoric habit, and also prevents them from being employed in other cases where they might be useful. Persons of a spare habit of body, are those likely to derive most benefit from malt liquors. I often recommend them to delicate youths and young girls who are just shooting into maturity, and often with the best effect. Lusty, full-bodied, plethoric people, should abstain from them, at least from porter and strong ale, which are much too fattening and nutritious for persons of this description. They are also, generally speaking, injurious in indigestion and bowel complaints, owing to their tendency to produce flatulence. In such cases, they yield the palm to wine and spirits. It is to be regretted that the system of making home-brewed ale, common among the English, has made so little progress in Scotland. This excellent beverage is free from those dangerous combinations employed by the brewers, and to the labouring classes in particular, is a most nourishing and salubrious drink. I fully agree with Sir John Sinclair in thinking, that in no respect is the alteration in diet more injurious than in substituting ardent spirits for ale—the ancient drink of the common people. Though an occasional and moderate allowance of spirits will often benefit a working man, still the tendency of people to drink these fluids to excess renders even their moderate indulgence often hazardous; and hence, in one respect, the superiority possessed over them by malt liquors.
In higher circles, where there is good living and little work, liquors of any kind are far less necessary; and, till a man gets into the decline of life, they are, except under such circumstances as have been detailed, absolutely useless. When he attains that age, he will be the better of a moderate allowance to recruit the vigour which approaching years steal from the frame. For young and middle-aged men, in good circumstances and vigorous health, water is the best drink; the food they eat being sufficiently nutritious and stimulating without any assistance from liquor. For young people, in particular, liquors of all kinds are, under common circumstances, not only unnecessary in health, but exceedingly pernicious, even in what the world denominate moderate quantities. This is especially the case when the habit is daily indulged in. One of the first physicians in Ireland has published his conviction on the result of twenty years’ observation—“That were ten young men on their twenty-first birth day, to begin to drink one glass (equal to two ounces) of ardent spirits, or a pint of Port wine or Sherry, and were they to drink this supposed moderate quantity of strong liquor daily, the lives of eight out of the ten would be abridged by twelve or fifteen years.” “An American clergyman,” says Professor Edgar, “lately told me that one of his parishioners was in the habit of sending to his son at school a daily allowance of brandy and water, before the boy was twelve years of age. The consequence was, that his son, before the age of seventeen, was a confirmed drunkard, and he is now confined in a public hospital.” The force of this anecdote must come home to every one. Nothing is more common, even in the best society, than the practice of administering wine, punch, &c., even to children—thus not only injuring their health, and predisposing them to disease, but laying the foundation for intemperance in their maturer years.
Having stated thus much, it is not to be inferred that I advocate the banishment of liquors of any kind from society. Though I believe mankind would be benefited upon the whole, were such stimulants to be utterly proscribed, yet, in the present state of things, and knowing the fruitlessness of any such recommendation, I do not go the length of urging their total disuse. I only would wish to inculcate moderation, and that in its proper meaning, and not in the sense too often applied to it; for, in the practice of many, moderation (so called) is intemperance, and perhaps of the most dangerous species, in so far as it becomes a daily practice, and insinuates itself under a false character, into the habits of life. Men thus indulge habitually, day by day, not perhaps to the extent of producing any evident effect either upon the body or mind at the time, and fancy themselves all the while strictly temperate, while they are, in reality, undermining their constitution by slow degrees—killing themselves by inches, and shortening their existence several years. The quantity such persons take at a time, is perhaps moderate and beneficial, if only occasionally indulged in, but, being habitually taken, it injures the health, and thus amounts to actual intemperance. “It is,” says Dr. Beecher, and I fully concur with him, “a matter of unwonted certainty, that habitual tippling is worse than periodical drunkenness. The poor Indian who once a-month drinks himself dead, all but simple breathing, will outlive for years the man who drinks little and often, and is not perhaps suspected of intemperance. The use of ardent spirits daily, as ministering to cheerfulness or bodily vigour, ought to be regarded as intemperance. No person probably, ever did or ever will receive ardent spirits into his system once a-day and fortify his constitution against its deleterious effects, or exercise such discretion and self-government, as that the quantity will not be increased, and bodily infirmities and mental imbecility be the result; and, in more than half the instances, inebriation. Nature may hold out long against this sapping and mining of the constitution, which daily tippling is carrying on, but, first or last, this foe of life will bring to the assault enemies of its own formation, before whose power the feeble and the mighty will be alike unable to stand.”
Let those, therefore, who will not abandon liquors, use them in moderation, and not habitually, or day by day, unless the health should require it, for cases of this kind we sometimes do meet with, though by no means so often as many would believe. Abstractly considered, liquors are not injurious. It is their abuse that makes them so, in the same manner as the most wholesome food becomes pernicious when taken to an improper excess.
APPENDIX.
No. I.
Excerpt from Paris’ Pharmacologia.
“The characteristic ingredient of all wines is alcohol, and the quantity of this, and the condition or state of combination in which it exists, are the circumstances that include all the interesting and disputed points of medical inquiry. Daily experience convinces us that the same quantity of alcohol, applied to the stomach under the form of natural wine, and in a state of mixture with water, will produce very different effects upon the body, and to an extent which it is difficult to comprehend: it has, for instance, been demonstrated that Port, Madeira, and Sherry contain from one-fourth to one-fifth of their bulk of alcohol, so that a person who takes a bottle of either of them, will thus take nearly half a pint of alcohol, or almost a pint of pure brandy! and moreover, that different wines, although of the same specific gravity, and consequently containing the same absolute proportion of spirit, will be found to vary very considerably in their intoxicating powers; no wonder, then, that such results should stagger the philosopher, who is naturally unwilling to accept any tests of difference from the nervous system, which elude the ordinary resources of analytical chemistry; the conclusion was therefore drawn, that alcohol must necessarily exist in wine, in a far different condition from that in which we know it in a separate state, or, in other words, that its elements only could exist in the vinous liquor, and that their union was determined, and, consequently, alcohol produced by the action of distillation. That it was product and not the educt of distillation, was an opinion which originated with Rouelle, who asserted that alcohol was not completely formed until the temperature was raised to the point of distillation: more lately, the same doctrine was revived and promulgated by Fabbronni, in the memoirs of the Florentine Academy. Gay-Lussac has, however, silenced the clamorous partisans of this theory, by separating the alcohol by distillation at the temperature of 66° Fah., and by the aid of a vacuum, it has since been effected at 56°; besides, it has been shown that by precipitating the colouring matter, and some of the other elements of the wine, by sub-acetate of lead, and then saturating the clear liquor with sub-carbonate of potass, the alcohol may be completely separated without any elevation of temperature; and by this ingenious expedient, Mr. Brande has been enabled to construct a table, exhibiting the proportions of combined alcohol which exist in the several kinds of wine: no doubt, therefore, can remain upon this subject, and the fact of the difference of the effect, produced by the same bulk of alcohol, when presented to the stomach in different states of combination, adds another striking and instructive illustration to those already enumerated in the course of this work, of the extraordinary powers of chemical combination in modifying the activity of substances upon the living system. In the present instance, the alcohol is so combined with the extractive matter of the wine, that it is probably incapable of exerting its full specific effects upon the stomach, before it becomes altered in its properties, or, in other words, digested; and this view of the subject may be fairly urged in explanation of the reason why the intoxicating effects of the same wine are so liable to vary, in degree, in the same individual, from the peculiar state of his digestive organs at the time of his potation. Hitherto we have only spoken of pure wine, but it is essential to state, that the stronger, wines of Spain, Portugal, and Sicily, are rendered remarkable in this country by the addition of brandy, and must consequently contain uncombined alcohol, the proportion of which, however, will not necessarily bear a ratio to the quantity added, because, at the period of its admixture, a renewed fermentation is produced by the scientific vintner, which will assimilate and combine a certain portion of the foreign spirit with the wine: this manipulation, in technical language, is called fretting-in. The free alcohol may, according to the experiments of Fabbronni, be immediately separated by saturating the vinous fluid with sub-carbonate of potass, while the combined portion will remain undisturbed: in ascertaining the fabrication and salubrity of a wine, this circumstance ought always to constitute a leading feature in the inquiry; and the tables of Mr. Brande would have been greatly enhanced in practical value, had the relative proportions of uncombined spirit been appreciated in his experiments, since it is to this, and not to the combined alcohol that the injurious effects of wine are to be attributed. ‘It is well known,’ observes Dr. Macculloch, ‘that diseases of the liver are the most common, and the most formidable of those produced by the use of ardent spirits; it is equally certain that no such disorders follow the intemperate use of pure wine, however long indulged in: to the concealed and unwitting consumption of spirit, therefore, as contained in the wines commonly drunk in this country, is to be attributed the excessive prevalence of those hepatic affections, which are comparatively little known to our continental neighbours.’ Thus much is certain, that their ordinary wines contain no alcohol but what is disarmed of its virulence by the prophylactic energies of combination.”