[27] In speaking of the treatment, it is necessary to guard against confounding other affections with drunkenness:—“There is a species of delirium that often attends the accession of typhus fever, from contagion, that I have known to be mistaken for ebriety. Among seamen and soldiers, whose habits of intoxication are common, it will sometimes require nice discernment to decide; for the vacant stare in the countenance, the look of idiotism, incoherent speech, faltering voice, and tottering walk, are so alike in both cases, that the naval and military surgeon ought at all times to be very cautious how he gives up a man to punishment, under these suspicious appearances. Nay, the circumstance of his having come from a tavern, with even the effluvium of liquor about him, are signs not always to be trusted; for these haunts of seamen and soldiers are often the sources of infection.”—Trotter.
[28] “They have a custom of fostering a liver complaint in their geese, which encourages its growth to the enormous weight of some pounds; and this diseased viscus is considered a great delicacy.”—Matthew’s Diary of an Invalid.
[29] Vide [Appendix No. I.]
[30] The Portland Powder consisted of equal parts of the roots of round birthwort and gentian, of the leaves of germander and ground pine, and of the tops of the lesser centaury, all dried. Drs. Cullen, Darwin, and Murray of Göttingen, with many other eminent physicians, bear testimony to the pernicious effects of this compound.
[31] “Falstaff. Thou art our admiral: thou bearest the lanthorn in the poop; but ’tis in the nose of thee: thou art the knight of the burning lamp.
“Bardolph. Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm.
“Falstaff. No, I’ll be sworn! I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a death’s head or a memento mori. I never see thy face but I think of hell-fire.”—“When thou rann’st up Gads-hill in the night to catch my horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus, or a ball of wildfire, there’s no purchase in money. O! thou art a perpetual triumph—an everlasting bonfire light: thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with me in the night betwixt tavern and tavern; but the Sack thou hast drunk me would have bought me lights as good cheap, at the dearest chandler’s in Europe. I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two and thirty years—heaven reward me for it!”
[32] This circumstance has not escaped the observation of Shakspeare—“Chief Justice. Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old, with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity; and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!”
[33] “Let nobody tell me that there are numbers who, though they live most irregularly, attain, in health and spirits, those remote periods of life attained by the most sober; for this argument being grounded on a case full of uncertainty and hazard, and which, besides, so seldom occurs as to look more like a miracle than the work of nature, men should not suffer themselves to be thereby persuaded to live irregularly, nature having been too liberal to those who did so without suffering by it; a favour which very few have any right to expect.”—Carnaro on Health.
[34] “The workmen in provision stores have large allowances of whisky bound to them in their engagements. These are served out to them daily by their employers, for the purpose of urging them, by excitement, to extraordinary exertion. And what is the effect of this murderous system? The men are ruined, scarcely one of them being capable of work beyond fifty years of age, though none but the most able-bodied men can enter such employment.”—Beecher’s Sermons on Intemperance, with an Introductory Essay by John Edgar. This is an excellent little work, which I cordially recommend to the perusal of the reader.