heat-producing and respiratory. Note the two classes — nitrogenous or tissue-feeding, hydrocarbonic or heat-producing, which is alias for force-supplying. Alcohol is not food in either of these senses.

188. But you will say beer-drinkers grow stout, and calves are quickly fattened with gin and barley; but it has been shown that these effects are not due to alcohol, but to the starch and sugar imbibed, and that, if the influence of alcohol comes in at all, it does so indirectly by unhealthy sleep and disordered functions causing various kinds of degeneration.

189. “But at all events," it may be said, “alcohol warms you up for the time; it is surely hydrocarbonic, or heat-producing." The coachman's great idea in cold weather is to have a glass to warm himself. Who has not seen the poor cabman vainly trying to expel the cold with pint after pint, dram after dram? Well, the spirit makes him feel a certain tingling or sensation of warmth and refreshment, before leaving him colder than ever, but it is not really heatproducing. When you drink in cold weather

you experience a warm shock because the blood is discharged in a warm sheet from the centre to the circumference, thus affecting at once a larger sensitive surface, but it leaves the heart cold, just as when a blast of soot comes down the chimney we see it makes a burst of flame, but it cools the fire; and so alcohol, instead of making you warm, really cools you. Each draught robs the heart, puts out your central fire. You may stir and stir, you may drink and drink, and each time more will be wanted and less effected, for there will be less left to produce any effect with.

190. But if alcohol does not build up, it destroys. What is its action on the MEMBRANES ? Every organ and muscle of the body is wrapt about and separated for its functions by gelatinous membrane. Upon the integrity of this membrane depends the building up and nourishment of the body, and it must at all times be thoroughly saturated with water. Alcohol greedily drinks up this water. The membrane thickens or shrinks, and the fluids no longer pass freely to nourish and sustain the tissue.

191. How does it act on the BLOOD? The

health of every part of the body depends upon the free circulation of the tiny blood corpuscles through all the minute windings of the system. Alcohol often runs them too closely together. Their very shape is changed, their power to absorb gases impaired, and when the blood cells are sufficiently massed together, they pass less easily through the minute vessels of the lungs: hence the sudden deaths from congestion, hence also phthisis. Out of 2,000 consumptives, it was found that 360 alone were not due to drink.

192. And the HEART? Spirit whips up the pulse notoriously, but what does that mean? Enlargement of the heart by excessive action, enfeeblement of the heart by reaction, stretching and coarsening of its delicate valves and cords; hence irregular supply of blood, from which every organ and function suffers, until local disease of some kind or other is sure to be set up.

193. But does not drink give strength to the MUSCLES? By some curious experiments, which consisted in tying weights to animals excited by stimulants, Dr. Richardson proved that their

muscular power was in no one instance increased, and that it soon became impaired; indeed, he says, "If we treated our domestic animals with this agent (alcohol) as we treat ourselves, we should soon have none that were tameable, none that were workable, and none that were edible."

A friend of mine told me, when he was in Scotland last year, walking over the moors, he could walk the keepers off their feet, because he drank cold tea whilst they drank whiskey. He was not a total abstainer, but when he went in for extra exertion he cut down his stimulants.

194. But alcohol strengthens the power of the MIND? It stimulates the brain only to leave it prostrate. At a pinch it may help us to go on, or nerve us to do what without it would be impossible, but as an habitual resource it has proved, and will ever prove, delusive and disastrous. A gentleman told me the other day that in his office, when, owing to a great commercial crisis, there was a fortnight of high pressure put upon the clerks, they had to work day and night, and most of them took to stimulants. My friend cut off his stimulant and took to coffee

and solid food. At the end of the fortnight all the other men were laid up, but, he added, “I was better than ever." I may add that Dr. Carpenter, whilst approving the use of alcohol in the treatment of diseases and in certain exceptional constitutions, does not believe in its power to sustain us under bodily or mental exertion, extreme cold or heat, vicissitudes of temperature, bad air, or in its power of helping us to resist sundry other morbific agencies—fever, malaria, &c.

195. What, then, are the facts? Alcohol does not strengthen the mind; alcohol does not make tissue or improve the membrane; it does not purify the blood, but corrupts or deteriorates its very elements. It induces disease of the heart, the liver, and the lungs, and fosters consumption to an enormous extent; it brings on diseases of the brain, the spine, and the stomach, and the nervous system generally; and there is no part of the body or the mind over which it has not, after being in long use, a most deteriorating and disastrous influence.

196. I now come to deal with the enormous