The inhabitants of Switzerland, and of several other countries, are supplied on some occasions, with no other water than that which is obtained from snow, and the prevalence of goitre among the Swiss, has been attributed by some physicians to that circumstance.
But man is not satisfied with this excellent beverage—water—which is ever at hand, and to be obtained without a price.
While yet little advanced in the knowledge of the arts, man discovered that the various juices with which the various fruits of the earth abound, afforded, during fermentation, a liquor which possessed properties such as strongly recommended it to his use. These juices, after fermentation, prove exhilarating and intoxicating, and all the nations of the world have their respective wines or intoxicating beverages. This liquor, which is the product of fermentation, gives to these juices their peculiar character. It is called spirits of wine, is colourless, and is lighter than water.
The liquors in which that active agent resides, when taken in small quantities, quicken the circulation of the blood, render more acute the perceptions, and augment the heat of the body. When these liquors are taken more copiously, the circulation becomes violently affected, the face flushes, and the blood is sent to the head, with too great velocity, and in too great abundance.
At first the mind is stimulated, but there gradually ensue sleep, stupor, and privation of sense and motion, which may continue even unto death. Several cases, in which death took place in this way from drinking to excess, are detailed in Mr Watson’s excellent work on homicide. But when the quantity which is taken is insufficient to produce the last-mentioned effects, but is often repeated, it frequently happens that disease, more or less acute, attacks some of the more important organs of the body, as the stomach, liver, kidneys, brain, heart, and the general nervous system.
The diseases which follow the long continued excessive use of liquors, containing spirits of wine, vary in their nature, but, on the whole, they prove highly dangerous, interfere with the performance of some of the most important functions, and often lead directly to a mortal result.
Where death is not the immediate consequence of the diseased condition of these organs, symptoms arise which make the course of life run bitterly along, the general system breaks up, the miserable victim presents in vivid colours, the signs of premature decay, the accession of acute and mortal sickness is greatly favoured, and the intellectual faculties are impaired.
Many melancholy instances are known of soldiers at the sacking of conquered towns, who, indulging in wine and other spirituous liquors to great excess, have died in vast numbers, both immediately, and more slowly, through the operation of disease, which had been induced by too deep potations, by too long protracted carousing, and by that exposure to those influences favourable to the developement of disease, to which excess never fails to lead.
“Some thousands of soldiers covered the great square and the adjoining streets (of Moscow), but they lay extended and stiff in front of the magazines of brandy which they had broken open, and from which they had drawn death, expecting to derive from them life.”[[8]]
[8]. Segur’s Expedition to Russia.