Kitabı oku: «Tobacco and Alcohol»

– "Quæres a me lector amabilis quod plerique sciscitantur laudemne an vero damnem tabaci usum? Respondeo tabacum optimum esse. Tu mi lector tabaco utere non abutere." – Magnenus Exercitationes de Tabaco, Ticino, 1658.

PREFACE

Five weeks ago to-day the idea of writing an essay upon the physiological effects of Tobacco and Alcohol had never occurred to us. Nevertheless, the study of physiology and pathology – especially as relating to the action of narcotic-stimulants upon nutrition – has for several years afforded us, from time to time, agreeable recreation. And being called upon, in the discharge of a regularly-recurring duty, to review Mr. Parton's book entitled "Smoking and Drinking," it seemed worth while, in justice to the subject, to go on writing, – until the present volume was the result.

This essay is therefore to be regarded as a review article, rewritten and separately published. It is nothing more, as regards either the time and thought directly bestowed upon it, or the completeness with which it treats the subject. Bearing this in mind, the reader will understand the somewhat fantastic sub-titles of the book, and the presence of a number of citations and comments which would ordinarily be neither essential nor desirable in a serious discussion. Had we been writing a systematic treatise, with the object of stating exhaustively our theory of the action of Tobacco and Alcohol, we should have found it needful to be far more abstruse and technical; and we should certainly have had no occasion whatever to mention Mr. Parton's name. As it is, the ideal requirements of a complete statement have been subordinated – though by no means sacrificed – to the obvious desideratum of making a summary at once generally intelligible and briefly conclusive.

The materials used especially in the preparation of this volume were the following:

Anstie: Stimulants and Narcotics. Philadelphia, 1865.

Lallemand, Duroy, et Perrin: Du Rôle de l'Alcool et des Anesthésiques. Paris, 1860.

Baudot: De la Destruction de l'Alcool dans l'Organisme. Union Médicale, Nov. et Déc., 1863.

Bouchardat et Sandras: De la Digestion des Boissons Alcooliques. Annales de Chimie et de Physique, 1847, tom. XXI.

Duchek: Ueber das Verhalten des Alkohols im thierischen Organismus. Vierteljahrschrift für die praktische Heilkunde. Prague, 1833.

Von Bibra: Die Narkotischen Genussmittel und der Mensch. Nürnberg, 1855.

And the works of Taylor, Orfila, Christison, and Pereira, on Materia Medica and Poisons; of Flint, Dalton, Dunglison, Draper, Carpenter, Liebig, Lehmann, and Moleschott, on general Physiology; several of the special works on Tobacco mentioned in the Appendix; and the current medical journals.

Oxford Street, Cambridge, November 23, 1868.

I.
It does Pay to Smoke

Mr. James Parton having abandoned the habit of smoking, has lately entered upon the task of persuading the rest of mankind to abandon it also.¹ His "victory over himself" – to use the favourite expression – would be incomplete unless followed up by a victory over others; and he therefore desists for a season from his congenial labours in panegyrizing Aaron Burr, B. +F. Butler, and other popular heroes, in order that he may briefly descant upon the evil characters of tobacco and its kindred stimulants. Some of the sophisms and exaggerations which he has brought into play while doing so, invite attention before we attempt what he did not attempt at all – to state squarely and honestly the latest conclusions of science on the subject.

According to Mr. Parton, tobacco is responsible for nearly all the ills which in modern times have afflicted humanity. As will be seen, he makes no half-way work of the matter. He must have the whole loaf, or he will not touch a crumb. He scorns all carefully-limited, compromising, philosophical statements of the case. Whatever the verdict of science may turn out to be, he knows that no good ever did come, ever does come, or ever will come, from the use of tobacco. All bad things which tobacco can do, as well as all bad things which it cannot do – all probable, possible, improbable, impossible, inconceivable, and nonsensical evil results – are by Mr. Parton indiscriminately lumped together and laid at its door. It is simply a diabolical poison which, since he has happily eschewed the use of it, had better be at once extirpated from the face of the earth. Of all this, Mr. Parton is so very sure that he evidently thinks any reasoning on the subject quite superfluous and out of place.

The paucity of his arguments is, however, compensated by the multitude and hardihood of his assertions. A sailor, he says, should not smoke; for "why should he go round this beautiful world drugged?" Note the petitio principii in the use of the word "drugged." That the smoker is, in the bad sense of the word, drugging himself, is the very point to be determined; but Mr. Parton feels so sure that he substitutes a sly question-begging participle for a conscientious course of investigation. With nine readers out of ten this takes just as well; and then it is so much easier and safer, you know. Neither should soldiers smoke, for the glare of their pipes may enable some hostile picket to take deadly aim at them. Moreover, a "forward car," in which a crowd of smoking veterans are returning from the seat of war, is a disgusting place. And "that two and two make four is not a truth more unquestionably certain than that smoking does diminish a soldier's power of endurance, and does make him more susceptible to imaginary dangers." (p. 17.) This statement, by the way, is an excellent specimen of Mr. Parton's favourite style of assertion. He does not say that his private opinion on this complex question in nervous physiology is well supported by observation, experiment and deduction. He does not say that there is at least a preponderance of evidence in its favour. He does not call it as probable as any opinion on such an intricate matter can ever be. But he says "it is as unquestionably certain as that two and two make four." Nothing less will satisfy him. Let it no longer be said that, in the difficult science of physiology, absolute certainty is not attainable!

Then again, the soldier should not smoke, because he ought always to be in training; and no Harvard oarsman needs to be told "that smoking reduces the tone of the system and diminishes all the forces of the body – he knows it." The profound physiological knowledge of the average Harvard under-graduate it would perhaps seem ungracious to question; but upon this point, be it said with due reverence, doctors disagree. We have known athletes who told a different story. Waiving argument for the present, however, we go on presenting Mr. Parton's "certainties." One of these is that every man should be kept all his life in what prizefighters call "condition," which term Mr. Parton supposes to mean "the natural state of the body, uncontaminated by poison, and unimpaired by indolence or excess." Awhile ago we had "drugs," now we have "poison," but not a syllable of argument to show that either term is properly applicable to tobacco. But Mr. Parton's romantic idea of the state of the body which accompanies training is one which is likely to amuse, if it does not edify, the physiologist. So far from "condition" being the "natural (i.e. healthy) state of the body," it is an extremely unnatural state. It is a condition which generally exhausts a man by the time he is thirty-five years old, rendering him what prizefighters call "stale." It is not "natural," or normal, for the powers either of the muscular or of the nervous system to be kept constantly at the maximum. What our minds and bodies need is intermittent, rhythmical activity. "In books and work and healthful play," not "in work and work and work alway," should our earlier and later years be passed; and a man who is always training for a boatrace is no more likely to hold out in the plenitude of his powers than a man who is always studying sixteen hours a day. The only reason why our boys at Yale and Harvard are sometimes permanently benefited by their extravagant athleticism is that they usually leave off before it is too late, and begin to live more normally. For the blood to be continually determined toward the muscles, and for the stomach to be continually digesting none but concentrated food, is a state of things by no means favourable to a normal rate and distribution of nutritive action; and it is upon this normal rate and distribution of nutrition that life, health and strength depend. It is as assisting this process that we shall presently show the temperate use of tobacco to be beneficial. Mr. Parton's idea well illustrates the spirit of that species of "radical" philosophy which holds its own opinions as absolutely and universally, not as relatively and partially, true; which, consequently, is incapable of seeing that one man's meat may be another man's poison, and which is unable to steer safely by Scylla without turning the helm so far as to pitch head foremost into Charybdis. Mr. Parton sees that athletic exercise is healthful, and he jumps at once to the conclusion that every man should always and in all circumstances keep himself in training. Such was not the theory of the ancient Athenians: μηδεν ἂγαν was their principle of life, – the principle by virtue of which they made themselves competent to instruct mankind.

Having thus said his say about muscular men, Mr. Parton goes on to declare that smoking is a barbarism. "There is something in the practice that allies a man with barbarians, and constantly tends to make him think and talk like a barbarian." We suppose Mr. Parton must know this; for he does not attempt to prove it, unless indeed he considers a rather stupid anecdote to be proof. He tells us how he listened for an hour or so to half a dozen Yale students in one of the public rooms of a New-Haven hotel, talking with a stable-keeper about boat-racing. They swore horribly; and of course Mr. Parton believes that if they had not been smokers they would neither have used profane language nor have condescended to talk with stable-keepers. Sancta simplicitas!

"We must admit, too, I think, that smoking dulls a man's sense of the rights of others. Horace Greeley is accustomed to sum up his opinions upon this branch of the subject by saying: 'When a man begins to smoke, he immediately becomes a hog.'" Our keen enjoyment of Mr. Greeley's lightness of touch and refined delicacy of expression should not be allowed to blind us to the possible incompleteness of his generalization. What! Milton a hog? Locke, Addison, Scott, Thackeray, Robert Hall, Christopher North – hogs?

And then smoking is an expensive habit. If a man smoke ten cigars daily, at twenty cents each, his smoking will cost him from seven to eight hundred dollars a year. This dark view of the case needs to be enlivened by a little contrast. "While at Cambridge the other day, looking about among the ancient barracks in which the students live, I had the curiosity to ask concerning the salaries of the professors in Harvard College." Probably he inquired of a Goody, or of one of the Pocos who are to be found earning bread by the sweat of their brows in the neighbourhood of these venerable shanties, for it seems they told him that the professors were paid fifteen or eighteen hundred dollars a year. Had he taken the trouble to step into the steward's office, he might have learned that they are paid three thousand dollars a year. Such is the truly artistic way in which Mr. Parton makes contrasts – $1500 per annum for a professor, $800 for cigars! Therefore, it does not pay to smoke.

Smoking, moreover, makes men slaves. The Turks and Persians are great smokers, and they live under a despotic form of government. Q.E.D. The extreme liberality of Oriental institutions before the introduction of tobacco Mr. Parton probably thinks so well known as not to require mention. But still worse, the Turks and Persians are great despisers of women; and this is evidently because they smoke. For woman and tobacco are natural enemies. The most perfect of men, the "highly-groomed" Goethe – as Mr. Parton elegantly calls him – loved women and hated tobacco. This aspect of the question is really a serious one. Tobacco, says our reformer, is woman's rival, – and her successful rival; therefore she hates it. For as Mr. Parton, with profound insight into the mysteries of the feminine character, gravely observes, "women do not disapprove their rivals; they hate them." This "ridiculous brown leaf," then, is not only in general the cause of all evil, but in particular it is the foe of woman. "It takes off the edge of virility"!!² It makes us regard woman from the Black Crook point of view. If it had not been for tobacco, that wretched phantasmagoria would not have had a run of a dozen nights. "Science" justifies this conjecture, and even if it did not, Mr. Parton intimates that he should make it. Doubtless!

One bit of Mr. Parton's philosophy still calls for brief comment. He wishes to speak of the general tendency of the poor man's pipe; and he means to say "that it tends to make him satisfied with a lot which it is his chief and immediate duty to alleviate, – he ought to hate and loathe his tenement-house home." A fine specimen of the dyspeptic philosophy of radicalism! Despise all you have got, because you cannot have something better. We believe it is sometimes described as the philosophy of progress. There can of course be no doubt that Mr. Parton's hod-carrier will work all the better next day, if he only spends the night in fretting and getting peevish over his "tenement-house home."

Such then, in sum and substance, is our reformer's indictment against tobacco. It lowers the tone of our systems, and it makes us contented; it wastes money, it allies us with barbarians, and it transforms us —mira quadam metamorphosi– into swine. Goethe, therefore, did not smoke, the Coming Man will not smoke, and General Grant, with tardy repentance, "has reduced his daily allowance of cigars." And as for Mr. Buckle, the author of an able book which Mr. Parton rather too enthusiastically calls "the most valuable work of this century," – if Mr. Buckle had but lived, he would doubtless have inserted a chapter in his "History," in which tobacco would have been ranked with theology, as one of the obstacles to civilization.

Throughout Mr. Parton's rhapsody, the main question, the question chiefly interesting to every one who smokes or wishes to smoke, is uniformly slurred over. Upon the question whether it is unhealthy to smoke, the Encyclopædias which Mr. Parton has consulted do not appear to have helped him to an answer. Yet this is a point which, in making up our minds about the profitableness of smoking, must not be taken for granted, but scientifically tested.

What, then, does physiology say about this notion – rather widespread in countries over which Puritanism has passed – that the use of tobacco is necessarily or usually injurious to health? Simply that it is a popular delusion – a delusion which even a moderate acquaintance with the first principles of modern physiology cannot fail to dissipate. Nay, more; if our interpretation shall prove to be correct, it goes still further. It says that smoking, so far from being detrimental to health, is, in the great majority of cases, where excess is avoided, beneficial to health; in short, that the careful and temperate smoker is, other things equal, likely to be more vigorous, more cheerful, and more capable of prolonged effort than the man who never smokes.

We do not pretend to know all this, nor are we "as certain of it as that two and two make four." Such certainty, though desirable, is not to be had in complex physiological questions. But we set down these propositions as being, so far as we can make out, in the present state of science, the verdict of physiology in the matter. Future inquiry may reverse that verdict; but as the physiologic evidence now stands, there is a quite appreciable preponderance in favor of the practice of smoking. Such was our own conclusion long before we had ever known, or cared to know, the taste of a cigar or pipe; and such it remains after eight years' experience in smoking. We shall endeavor concisely to present the rationale of the matter, dealing with some general doctrines likely to assist us both now and later, when we come to speak of alcohol.

We do not suppose it necessary to overhaul and quote all that the illustrious Pereira, in his "Materia Medica,"³ and Messrs. Johnston and Lewes, in their deservedly popular books, have said about the physiologic action of tobacco. Their works may easily be consulted by any one who is interested in the subject; and their verdict is in the main confined to the general proposition that, from the temperate use of tobacco in smoking, no deleterious results have ever been proved to follow. More modern and far more elaborate data for forming an opinion are to be found in the great treatise of Dr. Anstie, on "Stimulants and Narcotics," which we shall make the basis of the following argument.⁴

In the first place, we want some precise definition of the quite vaguely understood word, "narcotic." What is a narcotic? A narcotic is any poison which, when taken in sufficient quantities into the system, produces death by paralysis. The tyro in physiology knows that death must start either from the lungs, the heart, or the nervous system. Now a narcotic is anything which, in due quantity, kills by killing the nervous system. When death is caused by too great a proportion of carbonic acid in the air, it begins at the lungs; but when it is caused by a dose of prussic acid, it begins at the medulla oblongata, the death of which causes the heart and lungs to stop acting. Prussic acid is, therefore, a narcotic; and so are strychnine, belladonna, aconite, nicotine, sulphuric ether, chloroform, alcohol, opium, thorn-apple, betel, hop, lettuce, tea, coffee, coca, hemp, chocolate, and many other substances. All these, taken in requisite doses, will kill by paralysis; and all of them, taken in lesser but considerable doses, will induce a state of the nerves known as narcosis, which is nothing more nor less than incipient paralysis. Every man who smokes tobacco, or drinks tea or coffee, until his hands are tremulous and his stomach-nerves slightly depressed, has just started on the road to paralysis: he may never travel farther on it, but he has at least turned the corner. Every man who drinks ale, wine, or spirit until his face is flushed and his forehead moist, has slightly paralyzed himself. Alcoholic drunkenness is paralysis. The mental and emotional excitement, falsely called exaltation, is due, not to stimulation, but to paralysis of the cerebrum. The unsteady gait and groping motion of the hands are due to paralysis of the cerebellum. The feverish pulse and irregular respiration are due to paralysis of the medulla oblongata. The flushed face and tremulous, distressed stomach, are due to paralysis of the sympathetic ganglia. And when a person is "dead-drunk," his inability to perform the ordinary reflex acts of locomotion and grasping is due in part to paralysis of the spinal centres. The coma, or so-called sleep of drunkenness, is perfectly distinct from true reparative sleep, being the result of serious paralysis of the cerebrum, and closely allied to delirium.⁵ Now, what we have stated in detail concerning alcohol is also true of tobacco. A fatal dose of nicotine kills, just like prussic acid, by paralyzing the medulla, and thus stopping the heart's beating. The ordinary narcotic dose does not produce such notable effects as the dose of alcohol, because it is hardly possible to take enough of it. Excessive smoking does not make a man maudlin, but it causes restless wakefulness, which is a symptom of cerebral paralysis, and is liable, in rare cases, to end in coma. Its action on the cerebellum and spinal cord cannot be readily stated; but its effect on the medulla and sympathetic is most notable, being seen in depression or feeble acceleration of the pulse, trembling, nausea of the stomach, and torpidity of the liver and intestines. Nearly or quite all of these effects producible by tobacco, are producible also, in even a heightened degree, by narcotic doses of tea and coffee. A concentrated dose of tea will produce a paralytic shock; and a single cup of very strong coffee is sometimes enough to cause alarming disorder in the heart's action. All these narcotic effects, we repeat, are instances of paralytic depression. In no case are they instances of stimulus followed by reaction; but whenever a narcotic dose is taken, the depressive paralytic action begins as soon as the dose is absorbed by the blood-vessels. The cheerful and maudlin drunkard is not under the action of stimulus. His rapid, irregular, excited mental action is no more entitled to be called "exaltation" than is the delirium of typhoid fever. In the one case and in the other, we have not stimulation but depression of the vitality of the cerebrum; in both cases, the nutrition is seriously impaired; in both cases, molecular disorganization of the nerve-material is predominant.

So much concerning narcotics has been established, with vast and profound learning, by Dr. Anstie. No doubt, by this time, the reader is beginning to rub his eyes and ask, Is this the way in which you are going to show that smoking is beneficial? You define tobacco as a poison which causes paralysis, and then assure us that it pays to smoke! It is true, this has at first sight a paradoxical look; but as the reader proceeds further, he will see that we are not indulging either in paradoxes or in sophisms. We wish him to take nothing for granted, but merely to follow attentively our exposition of the case. We have indeed called tobacco a poison, – and so it is, if taken in narcotic doses. We have accused it of producing paralysis, – and so it does, when taken in adequate narcotic doses. We would now call attention to a property of narcotics, which is well enough known to all physiologists, but is usually quite misapprehended or ignored by popular writers on alcohol and tobacco.⁶ We allude to the fact that narcotics, when taken in certain small quantities, do not behave as narcotics, but as stimulants; and that they will in such cases produce the exact reverse of a narcotic effect. Instead of lowering nutrition, they will raise it; instead of paralyzing, they will invigorate. Taken in a stimulant dose, tobacco is not only not a producer, it is an averter, of paralysis. It is not only not a poison, but it is a healthful, reparatory stimulus.

It is desirable that this point should be thoroughly understood before we advance a step farther. Here is the pons asinorum in the study of narcotics, but it must be crossed if we would get at the truth concerning alcohol and tobacco. Alcohol is a poison, says the teetotaler, who means well, but has not studied the human organism; alcohol is a poison, and once a poison always a poison. Nothing can seem more logical or reasonable, so long as one knows nothing about the subject. A quart of brandy is admitted to be poison; is not, therefore, a spoonful of brandy also poison? We reply, by no means. Physiological questions are not to be settled by formal logic. Here the quantity is the all-essential element to be taken into the account. Common salt, in large doses, is a virulent poison; in lesser doses it is a powerful emetic; in small doses it is a gentle stimulant, and an article of food absolutely essential to the maintenance of life. In the spirit of the teetotaler's logic, then, it may be asked, If a pound of salt is a poison, is not a grain of salt also a poison? We reply, call it what you please, you cannot support life without it. So from the poisonous character of the quart of brandy, the poisonous character of the spoonful is by no means a legitimate inference. The evil effects of the small dose are to be ascertained by experiment, not to be taken for granted. Logic is useful in the hands of those who understand the subject they reason about; but in other hands it sometimes leads to queer results. It was logic that used up the one-hoss shay.

The general principle to guide us here is that of Claude Bernard, that whatever substance or action, in due amount, tends to improve nutrition, may, in excessive amount, tend to damage nutrition. In the vast majority of cases the difference between food and poison, between beneficent and malignant action, is only a difference of quantity. Oxygen is the all-important stimulus, without which nutrition could not be carried on for a moment. It constitutes about one-fifth of our atmospheric air. Let us now step into an atmosphere of pure oxygen, and we shall speedily rue such a radical proceeding. We shall live so fast that waste will soon get ahead of repair, and our strength will be utterly exhausted. The effect of sunlight on the optic nerve is to stimulate the medulla, and increase thereby the vigor of the circulation. But too intense a glare produces blindness and dizziness. The carpenter's thumb, by friction against the tools he uses, becomes over-nourished and tough; but if the friction be too continuous, there is lowered nutrition and inflammation. Moderate exercise enlarges the muscles; exercise carried beyond the point of fatigue wastes them. The stale prize-fighter and the overworked farmer are, from a physical point of view, pitiable specimens of manhood. A due amount of rich food strengthens the system and renders it superior to disease; an excessive amount of rich food weakens the system, and opens the door for all manner of aches and ailments. A pinch of mustard, eaten with meat, stimulates the lining of the stomach, and probably aids digestion; but a mustard poultice lowers the vitality of any part to which it is applied. Moderate emotional excitement is a healthful stimulus, both to mind and body; but intense and prolonged excitement is liable to produce delirium, mania, or paralysis. Ne quid nimis, therefore, the maxim of the wise epicurean, is also the golden rule of hygiene. If you would keep a sound mind in a sound body, do not rush to extremes. Steer cautiously between Scylla and Charybdis, and do not get wrecked upon the one or swallowed up in the other.

Few persons who have not been specially educated in science have ever learned this great lesson of Materia Medica, "that everything depends on the size of the dose." It is not merely that a small dose will often produce effects differing in degree from those produced by a large dose; nor is it merely that the small dose will often produce an effect differing in kind from that of the large dose; but it is that the small dose will often produce effects diametrically opposite and antagonistic to those of the large dose. The small dose may even serve as a partial antidote to the large dose. The adage concerning the hair of the dog that has bitten us, embodies the empirical wisdom of our ancestors on this subject. Especially is this true of all the substances classed as narcotics. In doses of a certain size, they, one and all, produce effects exactly the reverse of narcotic. If anything is entitled to be called a deadly narcotic poison, it is strychnia, which, by paralyzing the spinal cord, induces tetanic convulsions: yet minute doses of strychnia have been used with signal success in the cure of hemiplegic paralysis. In teething children, the pressure upon the dental branches of the trigeminal nerve sometimes causes an irritation so great as partly to paralyze the medulla, inducing clonic convulsions, and perhaps death by interference with the heart's action.⁷ In these cases, alcohol has been frequently used with notable efficacy, averting as it does the paralysis of the medulla. Epileptic fits, choreic convulsions, and muscular spasms – such as colic, and spasmodic asthma – are also often relieved by the tonic or anti-paralytic action of alcohol. And how often has the temperate smoker, after some occasion of distressing excitement, his limbs and viscera trembling, his nerves "all unstrung," or incipiently paralyzed, – how often has the temperate smoker found his whole system soothed and quieted, and the steadiness of his nerves restored, by a single pipe of tobacco! That this is due to its action as a counteracter of paralysis is shown by the fact that tobacco has been successfully used in tetanus,⁸ in spasm of rima glottidis,⁹ in spasmodic asthma,¹⁰ and in epilepsy.¹¹ For these phenomena physiology has but one explanation. They are due to the fact that narcotics, in small doses, either nourish, or facilitate the normal nutrition of the nervous system. They restore its equilibrium, enabling it, with diminished effort, to discharge its natural functions. And anything which performs this office is, in modern physiology, called a stimulant.

This lesson of dosage is one which cannot be learned too thoroughly. The would-be reformer says, "Touch not the unclean thing;" but the reply is, "No hurt has ever yet come to me from smoking: I will therefore smoke all the more, to confute these idle crotchets." This is the very crudity of undisciplined inference. In physiology we cannot go by the rule of three. Doctors can tell us how they prescribe brandy for epilepsy: exulting in his signal relief, the patient persists in taking a second dose, and – brings on another fit! Stimulation gives way to narcosis. In delirium tremens the stimulus of opium is often found to be of great service. But sometimes the unscientific physician, wishing to increase the beneficial effect, keeps on until he has administered a narcotic dose; when lo! all is undone, the enfeebled nerves, needing nothing but stimulus, have received the final shock, the medulla is paralyzed, and the heart ceases to beat. Let no one imagine, then, that this distinction between large and small quantities is trivial or wire-drawn. In therapeutics it is often the one all-important distinction. In dealing with narcotics, it is the root of the whole matter.

And now the question arises, what is a stimulant dose? How much tobacco can a man take daily with benefit to himself? The reply is obvious, that no universal rule can be given. In dealing with the science of life, to indulge in sweeping statements and glittering generalities is the surest mark of a charlatan. Mr. Parton says, with reference to alcohol, that he devoutly wishes the thing could be proved to be, always, everywhere, under any circumstances, and in any quantities, injurious, (p. 59.) If this could be proved, alcohol would be shown to be a substance all but unique in nature. So much as this cannot be said of arsenic, prussic acid, or strychnine. Science cannot be made to harmonize with the exaggerations of radicalism. With regard to tobacco, every man, moderately endowed with common sense, can soon tell how much he ought to take. The muscular tremour of narcosis is unmistakable, and a depressed or fluttering pulse is easily detected. When a man has smoked until these symptoms are awakened, let him stop short, – he has gone too far already. Let him take good care never to repeat the dose. The true Epicurean, to whom μηδεν ἂγαν has become second nature, who knows how to live, and who is instinctively disgusted by vulgar excess, will not be likely to oversmoke himself more than once. So much we say, in view of the impossibility of laying down universal rules. But it is well for the smoker to bear in mind that the more gradually the nicotine is absorbed into his circulating system, the better. For this reason a pipe, with porous bowl and long porous stem, is better than a cigar,²⁹ which is besides liable by direct contact to irritate the tongue and lips. And, likewise, it is better to smoke mild tobacco for an hour than strong tobacco for half an hour. Probably four or five pipes daily are enough for most healthy persons; but no such rule can be quoted as inflexible or infallible. Some persons, as we have said, are never stimulated by tobacco, and therefore ought never to smoke at all. Others can take relatively large quantities with little risk of narcosis. Dr. Parr would smoke twenty pipes in a single evening. The illustrious Hobbes sat always wrapped in a dense cloud of smoke, while he wrote his immortal works; yet he lived, hale and hearty, to the age of ninety-two.

We have spoken of persons who are incapable of deriving stimulus from the use of tobacco, but are always narcotized by it. We doubt if perfectly healthy persons are ever affected in this way. In a considerable number of cases we have observed that this incapacity occurs in people who are troubled with some chronic abnormal action or inaction of the liver; but we have as yet been unable to make any generalization which might serve to connect the two phænomena. In the great majority of cases, however, the incapacity has been probably induced by chronic narcosis resulting from the long-continued abuse of tobacco. Recent researches have shown that confirmed drunkards have after a while modified the molecular structure of their nervous systems to such an extent that they can never for the rest of their lives touch an alcoholic drink with safety. For such poor creatures, teetotalism is the only hygienic rule. It is fair to suppose that under the continuous influence of tobacco-narcosis the nervous system becomes metamorphosed in some analogous manner, so that after a while tobacco ceases to be of any use and becomes simply noxious. This is likely to be the case with those who begin to chew or smoke when they are half-grown boys, and keep on taking enormous doses of the narcotic until they have arrived at middle age. As Mr. Parton seems to find a difficulty in realizing that any one who smokes at all can smoke less than from ten to twenty large cigars daily, (for he always uses these figures when he has occasion to allude to the subject), we presume this to be about the ration which he used to allow himself. If so, no wonder that he found it did not pay to smoke. He probably did the wisest thing he could do when he gave up the habit; and his mistake has been in endeavouring to erect the limitations of his own experience into objective laws of the universe.

To sum up the physiological argument: we have endeavoured, as precisely as possible in the present state of knowledge, to answer the question, Does it pay to smoke? From the outset we have found it necessary to a clear understanding of the problem to keep steadily in mind the generic difference between the effects of tobacco when taken in narcotic quantities and its effects when taken in stimulant quantities. The first class of effects we have seen to be always and necessarily bad; though not so extremely and variously bad as hygienic reformers appear to believe.³⁰ With regard to the second class of effects, we have seen reason to believe that they are almost always good. We have seen reason to believe that, in the first place, the stimulant dose of tobacco retards waste; and, in the second place, that it facilitates repair: —

I. By its action on the sympathetic ganglia, aiding digestion, —

II. By its action on the medulla oblongata, aiding the circulation, —

III. By its action on the interstitial nerve-fibres, aiding the general assimilation of prepared material.

And lastly, we have witnessed the evidence of its effect upon the increased nutrition of the brain and spinal cord, in its alleviation of abnormal wakefulness and tremour. These are legitimate scientific inferences; and if they are to be overturned, it must be by scientific argument. They are not to be shaken by all of Mr. Parton's clamour about the Coming Man, and people who keep themselves "well-groomed," and ladies who write for the press. So far as our present knowledge of physiology goes for anything, it thus goes to exhibit tobacco, rightly used, as the great economizer of vital force, the aider of nervous co-ordination, and one of the ablest co-workers in normal and vigorous nutrition. And, as we have said before, it is the difference in the rate of nutrition which is probably the most fundamental difference between strength and feebleness, vigour and sluggishness, health and disease. It was because of rapid nutrition that Napoleon and Humboldt performed their prodigious tasks, and yet needed almost incredibly little sleep. It is the difference between fast and slow nutrition which makes one soldier's wound heal, while another's gangrenes; which enables one young girl to throw off a chest-cold with ease, while another is dragged into the grave by it. Waste and repair – these are the essential correlatives; and the agent which checks the former while hastening the latter can hardly be other than a friend to health, long life, and vigour.

We conclude with an inductive argument which an eminent physician has recently in conversation urged upon our attention. Throughout the whole world, probably nine men out of every ten use tobacco.³¹ Throughout the civilized world, women, as a general rule, abstain from the use of tobacco. Here we have an experiment, on an immense scale, ready-made for us. These three hundred million civilized men and women are subjected to the same varieties of climatic, dietetic, and social influences; their environments are the same; their inherited organic proclivities will average about the same; but the men smoke and the women do not. Now, if all that our hygienic reformers say about tobacco were true, the men in civilized countries should be afflicted with numerous constitutional diseases which do not afflict the women; or should be more liable to the diseases common to the two sexes; or, finally, should be shorter lived than the women. But statistics show that men are, on the whole, just as healthy and long-lived as women. In point of the average number of diseases³² to which they are subject; in point of liability to disease; and in point of longevity; the two sexes are in all civilized countries, exactly on a par with each other. During the two hundred years in which tobacco has been in common use, it has made no appreciable difference in the health or longevity of those who have used it. This is a rough experiment, in which no account is taken of dosage, and in which the results are only general averages. But to our mind, it is very significant. Taken alone, it shows conclusively that since tobacco first began to be used, its bad effects must have been at least fully balanced by its good effects. Taken in connection with our physiological argument, it shows quite conclusively that the current notion about the banefulness of tobacco is, as we remarked above, simply a popular delusion.

To prove that tobacco, rightly used, is harmless, is to prove that it does pay to smoke. Every smoker, who has not vitiated his nervous system by raw excess, knows that there is no physical pleasure in the long run comparable with that which is afforded by tobacco. If such pleasure is to be obtained without detriment to the organism, who but the grimmest ascetic can say that here is not a gain? But, if, as we have every reason to believe, the stimulant action of tobacco upon the human system is not only harmless but very decidedly beneficial, then it is doubly proved that it does pay to smoke.

II.
The Coming Man will Drink Wine

Mr. Parton treats alcohol much more respectfully than he treats tobacco. Though equally hostile to it, he apparently considers it a more formidable enemy. Instead of taking for granted from the outset that which it is his business to prove, he now condescends to employ something which to the unpractised eye may look like scientific argument. He has taken pains to collect such evidence as may be made to support his view of the case. And he frequently endeavours to assume an attitude of apparent impartiality by alluding to himself as a drinker of "these seductive liquids," – although, in point of fact, his whole essay is conceived in the narrowest spirit of radical teetotalism. As for tobacco, it does not seem to occur to him that any one can be found, so obstinate or so deluded as seriously to maintain that there is any good in it; and he therefore writes upon that subject with all the exaggeration of unterrified confidence. But in dealing with alcohol, his violence of statement is evidently due to an uneasy consciousness that there is a vast body of current opinion and of scientific doctrine which may be arrayed in the lists against him. He brushes away, with a contemptuous sneer, (p. 56) the opinions of the medical profession; but he is, nevertheless, unable wholly to ignore them. Propositions of the sort which he formerly alluded to as if no one could think of doubting them, he now thinks it necessary to state at length. The poisonous nature of tobacco could be taken for granted in a subordinate clause; but the poisonous nature of alcohol needs to be asserted in an independent sentence. "Pure alcohol, though a product of highly nutritive substances, is a mere poison, – an absolute poison, – the mortal foe of life in every one of its forms, animal and vegetable." (p. 64.)

This is the way in which the advocates of total abstinence like to begin. A good round assertion about "poison" is calculated to demoralize the inexperienced reader, and to scare him into half giving up the case at once. But it is not all barking dogs that bite. Morphia is a deadly poison; but opium, which contains it, is not "the mortal foe of life in all its forms," – it is sometimes the only thing which will keep soul and body together.³³ Theine is no doubt a deadly poison, but we manage to drink it with tolerable safety in our tea and coffee. Lactucin is probably a poison, yet people may eat a lettuce-salad and live. Chlorine is eminently a poison, yet we are all the time taking it into our systems, combined with sodium, in the shape of table-salt. Therefore over the verbal question whether a teaspoonful of pure alcohol is a poison, we do not care to wrangle. People do not drink pure alcohol, as a general thing. And as for the beverages into the composition of which alcohol enters, the reader will have no difficulty in understanding that they are poisons in just the same sense in which common salt and oxygen are poisons; i. e., if you take enough of them, they will kill you. This point was sufficiently cleared up in our first chapter.

Mr. Parton's hostility to this "mortal foe of life in all its forms" has taken shape in six definite propositions. Concerning alcoholic liquor of any kind and in any quantity, he asserts, and attempts to prove, that it does not nourish, that it does not aid digestion, that it does not warm, that it does not strengthen, that it undergoes no chemical change in the system, and that it always injuriously affects the brain. Beginning with the last of these propositions, let us first see what Mr. Parton has to say for it.

"If I, at this ten A.M., full of interest in this subject, and eager to get my view of it upon paper, were to drink a glass of the best port, Madeira, or sherry, or even a glass of lager-bier, I should lose the power to continue in three minutes; or, if I persisted in going on, I should be pretty sure to utter paradox and spurts of extravagance, which would not bear the cold review of to-morrow morning. Any one can try this experiment. Take two glasses of wine, and then immediately apply yourself to the hardest task your mind ever has to perform, and you will find you cannot do it. Let any student, just before he sits down to his mathematics, drink a pint of the purest beer, and he will be painfully conscious of loss of power." Did it ever dimly occur to Mr. Parton that all men may not be constructed on exactly the same plan with himself?

We wonder how many drops of "seductive fluid," unwisely taken at the wrong time of day, are to be held responsible for the following "spurt" of extravagance: "The time, I hope, is at hand, when an audience in a theatre, who catch a manager cheating them out of their fair allowance of fresh air, will not sit and gasp, and inhale destruction till eleven P.M., and then rush wildly to the street for relief. They will stop the play; they will tear up the benches, if necessary; they will throw things on the stage; they will knock a hole in the wall; they will have the means of breathing, or perish in the struggle." Is this the way in which "well-groomed" people are expected to behave? Fancy an audience following this precious bit of advice. When Mlle. Janauschek, for instance, is finishing the third act of "Medea" or the second act of "Deborah," amid the tragic solemnity of the scene, fancy the audience, because of bad air in the theatre, getting up and flinging their canes and opera-glasses on the stage, in the heroic struggle for oxygen or death! Fancy four or five hundred grown-up, educated people behaving in this way! If these are to be the manners of the Coming Man, we trust it will be long before he comes.

Such is one of the "spurts of extravagance" which Mr. Parton apparently thinks will "bear the cold review of to-morrow morning." Having survived this, we may philosophically resign ourselves to the infliction of another, more nearly akin to our subject. "How we all wondered that England should think so erroneously, and adhere to its errors so obstinately, during our late war! Mr. Gladstone has in part explained the mystery. The adults of England, he said, in his famous wine-speech, drink, on an average, three hundred quarts of beer each per annum!" Another choice bit of radical philosophy: if your neighbour happens not to agree with your most cherished opinions, he must be idiotic, immoral, or drugged! The English failed to sympathize with us, because they are such beer-drinkers! What a rare faculty of disentangling causal relations! We believe that the working people, who drink the most beer, were just those who, as a class, were most ready to sympathize with us in the time of need. But Mr. Parton has "grounds" for his opinion. "It is physically impossible for a human brain, muddled every day with a quart of beer, to correctly hold correct opinions, or appropriate pure knowledge." "The receptive, the curious, the candid, the trustworthy brains, – those that do not take things for granted, and yet are ever open to conviction, – such heads are to be found on the shoulders of men who drink little or none of these seductive fluids." Mr. Parton has doubtless forgotten that the head of "the nearest approach to the complete human being that has yet appeared," the head of the "highly-groomed" Goethe – rested upon the shoulders of a man who drank his two or three bottles of wine daily.³⁴ But we are now rapidly getting into the æthereal region of certainties. "Taking together all that science and observation teach and indicate, we have one certainty: that, to a person in good health and of good life, alcoholic liquors are not necessary, but are always in some degree hurtful." So it is not an open question, after all! Certainty has been arrived at, – by Mr. Parton, at least. And it is so difficult to suppose that any sane mind, after due investigation, can come to a different opinion, that all persons who mean to keep on using alcohol are advised in pathetic language never to look into the facts:

"If ignorance is bliss, 't is folly to be wise."

The candid reader must admit that Mr. Parton has not, so far, made out a very overwhelming case in support of his opinion that alcohol always injures the brain. A personal experience, a "spurt of extravagance," a "physical impossibility," and a "certainty," are, on the whole, not very rocky foundations upon which to build a scientific conclusion. But this is all Mr. Parton has to offer.

In attempting to describe the influence of alcohol upon the brain and nervous system, it will be well for us to keep steadily in mind the fundamental difference between stimulant and narcotic doses, which was described at some length in our chapter on Tobacco. It is hardly necessary to state that Mr. Parton neither recognizes, nor appears dimly to suspect, the existence of any such distinction. His is one of those minds in which there are no half-way stations. With him, to rise above zero is inevitably to fly to the boiling-water point. But without keeping in mind this all-important distinction, any inquiry into the physiological effects of alcohol must end in confusion and paradox. Remembering this, let us examine first the narcotic, and then the stimulant effects of alcohol upon the nervous system.

The narcotic effects of alcohol upon the entire human organism are so bad that even the teetotaler does not need to exaggerate them. The stomach is not only damaged, and the cerebrum ruined, but a slow molecular change takes place throughout the nervous system, which ends by destroying the power of self-control and utterly demoralizing the character. Far be it from us, therefore, to palliate the consequences which sooner or later are sure to follow the wretched habit of drinking narcotic quantities of alcohol; or to look without genuine sympathy upon the philanthropic, though usually misguided attempts which radical aquarians are continually making to diminish the evil. Their feelings are often as right as their science is wrong. But because we believe that for a book to be of any value whatever, it must be true, and that false science can never, in the long run, be of practical benefit, we are not therefore to be set down as lukewarm in our abhorrence of alcoholic intemperance. Those who keep their hearts in subjection to their heads are often supposed to have no hearts at all. Those who do not forthwith get angry and utter "spurts of extravagance" whenever any social evil is mentioned, are often thought to be in secret sympathy with it. But how could we, by writing reams of fervid declamation, more forcibly express our disapproval of drunkenness than by recording the cold scientific statement that the first narcotic symptom produced by alcohol is a symptom of incipient paralysis?

We allude to the flushing of the face, which is caused by paralysis of the cervical branch of the sympathetic. This symptom usually occurs some time before the conspicuous manifestation of the ordinary signs of intoxication, which result from paralysis of the cerebrum. Of these signs the most prominent is the weakening of the ordinary power of self-control. The ruling faculty of judgment is suspended, volition becomes less steady, and imagination, no longer guided by the higher faculties, runs riot in such a way as to appear to be stimulated. But it is not stimulated; it is simply let loose. There is no stimulation in drunkenness; there is only disorganization. One acquired or organic power of the mind no longer holds the others in check. Hence the uncalled-for friendliness, the fitful anger, the extravagant or misplaced generosity, the ludicrous dignity, the disgusting amorousness, or the garrulous vanity, of the drunken man. Wine is said to exhibit a man as he really is, with the conventionalities of society laid aside. This is only half true, but it suggests the true statement. Wine exhibits a man as he is when the organized effects of ancestral and contemporary civilization upon his character are temporarily obliterated. We need no better illustration of the truth that drunkenness is not stimulation but paralysis of the cerebrum, than the order in which, under the influence of alcohol, the powers of the mind become progressively suspended. As a general rule those are first suspended which are the most recent products of civilization, and which have consequently been developed by inheritance through the least number of generations. These are of course the mind's highest organic acquisitions. The sense of responsibility, for instance, is a product of a highly complicated state of civilization, and, when fully developed, is perhaps chief among the moral acquirements which distinguish the civilized man from the savage. In progressing intoxication, the feeling of responsibility is the first to be put in abeyance. A man need be but slightly tipsy in order to become quite careless as to the consequences of his actions.³⁵ On the other hand, those qualities of the mind are the last to be overcome, which are the earliest inheritance of savagery, and which the civilized man possesses in common with savages and beasts. Then the animal nature of the man, no longer restrained by his higher faculties, manifests itself with a violence which causes it to seem abnormally stimulated in vigour. And in the stage immediately preceding stupor, it sometimes happens that the pupils are contracted,³⁶ and the whites of the eyes enlarged, giving to the face a horrible brute-like expression.

One apparent exception to this generalization needs only to be explained in order to confirm the rule. Memory, which usually figures as a high intellectual faculty, is often, even in deep drunkenness, capable of performing marvellous feats. While in college we once heard a tipsy fellow-student repeat verbatim the whole of that satire of Horace which begins "Unde et quo, Catius?" – which he had read over the same day before going to recitation, but which, as we felt sure, he could never designedly have committed to memory. It appeared, however, that, in the literal though not in the idiomatic sense of the phrase, he had "committed it to memory" to some purpose, for as we, struck with amazement, took down our Horace and followed him, we found that he made not the slightest verbal error. This performance on his part was almost immediately followed by heavy comatose slumber. On afterward questioning him, it appeared that he remembered nothing either of the Satire or of his remarkable feat. Several analogous cases are cited by Dr. Anstie.³⁷

This certainly looks like stimulation, but on comparing it with other instances of abnormal reminiscence differently caused, we shall find reason for believing that it is nothing of the kind. There is no doubt that insanity may in the most general way be described as a species of cerebral paralysis, yet in many kinds of insanity there is an abnormal quickening of memory. Likewise in idiocy, which differs from insanity as being due to arrested development rather than to degradation of the cerebrum, the same phænomenon is sometimes witnessed. We remember seeing a child who, though generally considered quite "foolish," could, as we were assured, accurately repeat large portions of each Sunday's sermon. Dr. Anstie mentions a boy, absolutely idiotic, who nevertheless "had a perfect memory for the history of all the farm animals in the neighbourhood, and could tell with unerring precision that this was So-and-so's sheep or pig among any number of other animals of the same kind." Similar phænomena have been observed in epileptic delirium, and in the delirium of fevers. Every one has heard Coleridge's story of the sick servant-girl who repeated passages from Latin, Greek and Hebrew authors which she had years before heard recited by a clergyman in whose house she worked. A gentleman in India, after a sunstroke, utterly lost his command of the Hindustani language, recovering it only during the recurrent paroxysms of epileptic delirium to which he was afterward subject. Equally interesting is the case of the Countess de Laval, who in the ravings of puerperal delirium was heard by her Breton nurse talking baby-talk to herself in the Breton language, – a language which she had known in early infancy, but had since so entirely forgotten as not to distinguish it from gibberish when spoken before her.³⁸ A similar exaltation of memory not unfrequently precedes the coma produced by chloroform; and it has been known to occur in cases of acute poisoning by opium and haschisch. Finally it may be observed that drowning men are said to recall, as in a panoramic vision, all the events of their lives, even the most trivial.

We may conclude therefore that the extraordinary memory sometimes observed in drunken persons, however obscure the interpretation of it may at present be, is at all events a symptom, not of mental exaltation, but of mental disorganization consequent upon cerebral disease. We may search in vain among the phænomena of intoxication for any genuine evidences of that heightened mental activity which is said to be followed by a depressive recoil. There is no recoil; there is no stimulation; there is nothing but paralytic disorder from the moment that narcosis begins. From the outset the whole nervous system is lowered in tone, the even course of its nutrition disturbed, and the rhythmic discharge of its functions interfered with.

Another remarkable effect of alcoholic narcotism – the most hopelessly demoralizing of all – yet remains to be treated. We refer to the perpetual craving of the drinker for the repetition, and usually for the increase, of his dose. It is a familiar fact that the drunkard is urged to the gratification of his appetite by such an irresistible physical craving that his power of self-control becomes after a while completely destroyed. And it is often observed that those who begin drinking moderately go on, as if by a kind of fatality, drinking oftener and drinking larger quantities, until they have become confirmed inebriates. But in the current interpretation of these facts there is, as might be expected, a great deal of confusion. On the one hand, the teetotalers declare that the use of alcohol in any amount creates a physical craving and necessitates a progressive increase of the dose. On the other hand, the common sense of mankind, perceiving that nine persons out of ten are all their lives in the habit of using alcoholic drinks, while hardly one person out of ten ever becomes a drunkard,³⁹ declares that this physical craving is not produced save in peculiarly organized constitutions. We believe that neither of these opinions is correct. In all probability, the demand for an increased narcotic effect is due to a gradual alteration in the molecular structure of the nervous system caused by frequently repeated narcosis; and if narcosis be invariably avoided, in systems which are free from its inherited structural effects, the craving is never awakened. This point is so interesting and important as to call for some further elucidation.

The researches of Bouchardat and Sandras,⁵⁵ and of Duchek,⁵⁶ have rendered it probable that, if alcohol undergoes any digestive transformation, it is first changed into aldehyde, from which are successively formed acetic acid, oxalic acid and water, and carbonic acid.⁵⁷ But this transformation, like any other digestive process, cannot go on unless the nervous system is in good working order. Now when a narcotic dose of alcohol is taken, the flow of gastric juice is prevented by local paralysis of the nerve-fibres distributed to the stomach. What then must happen? Solid food may remain undigested, in the stomach;⁵⁸ but liquid alcohol is easily absorbable, and has two ways of exit, – one through the portal system into the liver, the other through the lacteals into the general circulation, by which it will be carried chiefly to the organ which receives most blood, – namely, the brain. It is thus probable that no alcohol can be transformed after narcosis begins. But the absorbed alcohol, loading the circulation, begins at once to be excreted. Paralysis of the renal plexus of the sympathetic sets up a rapid diuresis, and considerable amounts of the volatile liquid escape through the lungs and skin. In examining, therefore, a drunken man or dog, we need not, on any theory, expect to find the intermediate products of alcoholic transformation; we must expect to find large quantities of undigested alcohol in the circulation, and notably in the brain and liver; and we need not be surprised if we detect unchanged alcohol in the excretions. Our experiment will not show that alcohol cannot be assimilated; it will only show how serious is the damage inflicted by a narcotic dose, in checking assimilation. Now all this applies with force to the experiments of Messrs. Lallemand, Duroy and Perrin. In their experiments, these gentlemen always tried intoxicating doses; thus paralyzing at the outset the whole digestive tract, and preventing the formation of those transformed products which they afterward vainly tried to discover. As so often happens in experimenting upon the enormously complex human organism, they began by creating abnormal conditions which rendered their conclusions inapplicable to the healthy body.

A further criticism by M. Baudot, supported by renewed experiments, is still more decisive. M. Baudot justly observes that in order to substantiate their conclusions, Messrs. Lallemand, Duroy and Perrin should have at least been able, with their excessively delicate tests, to discover in the excretions a large part of the alcohol which had been taken into the system. This, however, they never did. In all cases, the amount of alcohol recovered was very small, and bore but a trifling proportion to the amount which had been taken. According to these physiologists, the elimination always takes place chiefly through the kidneys. But M. Baudot, in a series of elaborate experiments, has proved that, unless the dose has been excessive, no sensible amount of alcohol reappears in the kidney-excretions for more than twenty-four hours. The quantity is so minute that the alcoometer is not in the least affected by it, and it requires the chromic acid test even to reveal its presence. Similar results have been obtained by experiments upon the breath.

Finally, the gravest doubts have been thrown upon the trustworthiness of the chromic acid test relied on by Messrs. Lallemand, Duroy and Perrin. It is considered possible, by good chemical authority, that the reactions in the test-apparatus, which they attributed to the escaping alcohol, may equally well have been caused by some of the results of alcoholic transformation. For reasons above given, however, it is probable that in cases of narcosis some alcohol always escapes. When we reflect upon its absorbability and its ready solubility in water, it seems likely beforehand that a considerable quantity must escape. But all that these able Frenchmen can be said to have accomplished, is the demonstration of the fact that when you take into your system a greater quantity of alcohol than the system can manage, a part of it is expelled in the same state in which it entered. And this may be said of other kinds of food.

These experiments have, therefore, instead of settling the question, left it substantially just where it was before. But we have now a more remarkable set of facts to contemplate. In many cases of typhoid fever, acute bronchitis, pneumonia, erysipelas, and diphtheria, occurring in Dr. Anstie's practice, it was found that the stomach could be made to retain nothing but wine or brandy. Upon these alcoholic drinks, therefore, the patients were entirely sustained for periods sometimes reaching a month in duration.⁵⁹ In nearly every case convalescence was rapid, and the emaciation was much slighter than usual: the quality of the flesh was also observed to be remarkably good. Dr. Slack, of Liverpool, had two female patients who, loathing ordinary food, maintained life and tolerable vigour for more than three months upon alcoholic drinks alone. Mr. Nisbet reports "the case of a child affected with marasmus, who subsisted for three months on sweet whisky and water alone, and then recovered; and that of another child, who lived entirely upon Scotch ale for a fortnight, and then recovered his appetite for common things." Many similar examples might be cited.

It may be said that alcohol maintained these persons by retarding the waste of the tissues. This is no doubt an admissible supposition. There is no doubt that alcohol, by its waste-retarding action, will postpone for some time the day of death from starvation.⁶⁰ But to this action there must be some limit. Though the waste is retarded, it is not wholly stopped. Though there is relatively less waste, there is still absolutely large waste. The mere act of keeping up respiration necessitates a considerable destruction of tissue. Then the temperature of the body must be kept very near 98° Fahrenheit, or life will suddenly cease; and the maintenance of this heat involves a great consumption of tissue. Now this waste, under the most favourable circumstances, will soon destroy life, unless it is balanced by actual repair. You may diminish the draught on your furnace as much as you please, – the fire will shortly go out unless fresh coal is added. Upon these points the data are more or less precise. The amount of waste material daily excreted from the body, under ordinary circumstances, is a little more than seven pounds.⁶¹ Of this the greater part is water, the quantity of carbon being about twelve ounces, and the quantity of nitrogenous matter about five ounces.⁶² To make up for this waste we usually require at least two and a half pounds of solid, and three pints of liquid, food.⁶³ In Dr. Hammond's experiments, the weight-sustaining power of the alcohol taken seems to have amounted to four or five ounces.⁶⁴ It will be seen, therefore, that in spite of any stimulant effect of alcohol upon nutrition, unless at least ten or twelve ounces of nitrogenous or carbonaceous matter be eaten daily, the weight of the body must rapidly diminish.

Now the experiments of Chossat have demonstrated that no animal can suddenly lose more than two-fifths of its normal weight without dying of starvation. If a man, therefore, weigh 150 lbs., for him 90 lbs. is the starvation-point; as soon as he reaches that weight he dies. Usually, indeed, death occurs before this degree of emaciation can have been attained, – in most cases, on the fifth or sixth day; though there are a few authentic instances of persons who have lived for twelve, and even sixteen, days before finally succumbing.

In view of these facts, we are willing to grant that people may in rare cases live for three months on their own tissues, if waste be duly retarded. We are willing to grant it, though we do not believe it. But we are not prepared to admit that this process can go on for six months or a year; and we believe that the cases now to be cited can in nowise be got rid of by such an interpretation.

Mr. Nisbet mentions the case of a man who lived for seven months entirely on spirit and water. At Wavertree, a young man afflicted with heart-disease lived for five years principally, and for two years solely, on brandy. His allowance was at first six ounces, afterward a pint, per diem. His weight was not materially decreased, when, at the end of the five years, he died of his disease. But the next case is still more remarkable. Dr. Inman had a lady-patient, about twenty-five years old, plump, active and florid, but somewhat deficient in power of endurance. "This lady had two large and healthy children in succession, whom she successfully nursed. On each occasion she became much exhausted, the appetite wholly failed, and she was compelled to live solely on bitter ale and brandy and water; on this regimen she kept up her good looks, her activity and her nursing, and went on this way for about twelve months; the nervous system was by this time thoroughly exhausted, yet there was no emaciation, nor was there entire prostration of muscular power."⁶⁵

For the accuracy of this statement there is to be had the testimony of Dr. Inman, the attendant physician, as well as that "of the lady's husband, of mutual friends occasionally residing in the house with her, of her mother, of her sisters, and of her nurse." We have apparently no alternative but to believe it; and if it is true, it is certainly decisive. It is nothing less than an experimentum crucis. The suggestion that this lady might have kept up her normal activity while nursing children, for a whole year, with no aliment except her own tissues and the water and vegetable matter contained in her ale and brandy, is too absurd to need refutation. The thing is an utter impossibility. Moreover, not being emaciated at the end of the year, she had probably been consuming her own tissues but very little. Her weight, her muscular activity, and the natural heat of her body, could have been sustained by nothing but the alcohol; which thus appears as a true food, at once nourishing, strength-giving, and heat-producing.

This conclusion is further re-enforced by the numerous cases on record of persons who have lived actively for many years upon a diet of alcoholic liquor accompanied by a quantity of solid food notoriously inadequate to support life. The case of Cornaro is outdone by some of those quoted by Dr. Anstie, as having occurred under his own observation. Of twelve cases which are described in detail, the most remarkable is that of a man aged 83, whose diet for twenty years had consisted of one bottle of gin and one small fragment of toasted bread daily. This old fellow, says Dr. Anstie, "would have been of little service as a practical illustration of the bodily harm wrought by drinking, being in truth rather an unusually active and vigorous person for his time of life." Probably the old man was not narcotized by his daily bottle of gin; or he would, long before the twenty years had elapsed, have shown symptoms of nervous disease. In most of these cases of abnormal diet, there occurs after a while a general breaking down of the nerve-centres, shown in delirium tremens, epileptic fits, or a sudden stroke of paralysis. They are not quoted, therefore, as examples to be followed, but as very important items of evidence in favour of the opinion that alcohol is food.

Taking all these considerations together, we believe it to be tolerably well made out that alcohol, whether changed within the body or not, is a true food, which nourishes, warms and strengthens. And Dr. Brinton, in the following passage, declares it to be, in many cases, a necessary food. "That teetotalism is compatible with health, it needs no elaborate facts to establish; but if we take the customary life of those constituting the masses of our inhabitants of towns, we shall find reason to wait before we assume that this result will extend to our population at large. And, in respect to experience, it is singular how few healthy teetotalers are to be met with in our ordinary inhabitants of cities. Glancing back over the many years during which this question has been forced upon the author by his professional duties, he may estimate that he has sedulously examined not less than 50,000 to 70,000 persons, including many thousands in perfect health. Wishing, and even expecting to find it otherwise, he is obliged to confess that he has hitherto met with but very few perfectly healthy middle-aged persons, successfully pursuing any arduous metropolitan calling under teetotal habits. On the other hand, he has known many total abstainers, whose apparently sound constitutions have given way with unusual and frightful rapidity when attacked by a casual sickness." "This," says an English reviewer of the French experiments, "is quite in accordance with what I have myself observed, and with what I can gather from other medical men; and it speaks volumes concerning the way in which we ought to regard alcohol. If, indeed, it be a fact that in a certain high state of civilization men require to take alcohol every day, in some shape or other, under penalty of breaking down prematurely in their work, it is idle to appeal to a set of imperfect chemical or physiological experiments, and to decide, on their evidence, that we ought to call alcohol a medicine or a poison, but not a food. I am obliged to declare that the chemical evidence is as yet insufficient to give any complete explanation of its exact manner of action upon the system; but that the practical facts are as striking as they could well be, and that there can be no mistake about them. And I have thought it proper that, while highly-coloured statements of the results of the new French researches are being somewhat disingenuously placed before the lay public, there should not be a total silence on the part of those members of the profession who do not see themselves called upon to yield to the mere force of agitation."⁶⁶ If this view of the case, which so strongly recommends itself to the mind of the practical physician, be the true one, we are forced to regard teetotalism, considered not in its moral but in its physiological aspects, as a dietetic heresy nearly akin to vegetarianism. Man can do without wine, as he can do without meat; but the rational course is to adopt that diet from which we can obtain the greatest amount of available vital power.

But even if we were to give up the doctrine that alcohol is a true food, the great indisputed and indisputable fact of its stimulant value would still remain. Tobacco neither nourishes the body nor warms it; yet it enables us to earn our daily bread with less fatigue, and to support the incessant trials of life with a more even spirit. The value of alcohol as a stimulant is inferior only to that of tobacco; or perhaps, for general purposes, it is quite unsurpassed. It compensates for the occasionally inevitable incapacity of ordinary food to maintain due nutrition; and in this way enables us to work longer, and with a lighter heart, and with less fear of ultimate depression. It bridges over the pitfalls which the complicated exigencies of modern life are constantly digging for us. Warm-hearted but weak-headed radicalism may imagine a utopian state of things in which money will grow on bushes and every one mind the moral law, and digestion be always easy, and vexation infrequent, and "artificial" stimulus unnecessary; but this is not the state of things amid which we live. A modern man cannot, if he does his duty, secure to himself the enjoyment of such a state. There are times when he must sacrifice a little of his own round perfection, if it be only to lend a helping hand to his neighbour. A kind of valetudinarian philosophy is now afloat, which says, Look out, above all things, for your own physical welfare. This philosophy contains a truth, but as usually manifested it is nothing but the result of a morbid self-consciousness. Duty sometimes requires that we should cease coddling ourselves, and go to work, unless we would see some cause suffer which interests other men, living and to come, besides ourselves. We must sometimes run to put the fire out, even if we do thereby lose our dinner, and interfere with the stomach's requirements. It is useless, then, to talk about agents which "support us in doing wrong," when, from the very constitution of the world and of society, we can no more go exactly "right" than we can draw a line which shall be mathematically straight. It is useless to speculate about an ideal society in which men can dispense with the agents which economize their nervous strength, when we find as a historical fact that no nation has ever existed which has been able to dispense with those agents. As long as there are inequalities in the daily ratio of waste and repair to be rectified, so long we shall get along better with wine than without it. For this, looked at from the widest possible point of view, is the legitimate function of alcohol, —to diminish the necessary friction of living.

This too is the view of Liebig: "As a restorative, a means of refreshment when the powers of life are exhausted, of giving animation and energy where man has to struggle with days of sorrow, as a means of correction and compensation where misproportion occurs in nutrition, wine is surpassed by no product of nature or of art… In no part of Germany do the apothecaries' establishments bring so low a price as in the rich cities on the Rhine; for there wine is the universal medicine of the healthy as well as the sick. It is considered as milk for the aged."⁶⁷

This is also the view of Dr. Anstie. Comparing the action of alcohol upon the organism with that of chloroform and sulphuric ether, he observes: "It seems as if the former were intended to be the medicine of those ailments which are engendered of the necessary everyday evils of civilized life, and has therefore been made attractive to the senses, and easily retained in the tissues, and in various ways approving itself to our judgment as a food; while the others, which are more rarely needed for their stimulant properties, and are chiefly valuable for their beneficent temporary poisonous action, by the help of which painful operations are sustained with impunity, are in great measure deprived of these attractions, and of their facilities for entering and remaining in the system."⁶⁸ Apart from its implied teleology, this passage contains the gist of the whole matter.

As for the Coming Man, whom Mr. Parton appears to regard as a sort of pugilist or Olympic athlete, we suppose he will undoubtedly have to exercise his brain sometimes, he will have to study, think and plan, he will have responsibilities to shoulder, his digestion will not always be preserved at its maximum of efficiency, his powers of endurance will sometimes be tried to the utmost. The period in the future when "we shall have changed all this" is altogether too remote to affect our present conclusion; which is that the Coming Man, so long as he is a member of a complex, civilized society, will continue to use, with profit as well as pleasure, the two universal stimulants, Alcohol and Tobacco.

APPENDIX.
Bibliography of Tobacco

For the benefit of those readers who may feel interested in this subject, the following list is added, of the principal works which have been written on the effects of tobacco. The older ones have, of course, little scientific value, yet they are often interesting and suggestive. They usually made the best use of the science of their time, which is more than can be said of some of the later treatises.

Baumann: Dissertatio de Tabaci virtutibus. Basil, 1579.

Everart: De herba Panacea. Antwerp, 1583.

Ziegler: Taback von dem gar heilsamen Wundkraute Nicotiana. Zurich, 1616.

Marradon: Dialogo del uso del Tabaco. Seville, 1618.

De Castro: Historia de las virtudes y propriedades de Tabacco. Cordova, 1620.

Thorius: Hymnus Tabaci. Leyden, 1622.

Neander: Tabacologia. Leyden, 1622.

Scriverius: Saturnalia, seu de usu et abusu Tabaci. Haarlem, 1628.

Braun: Quæstio medica de fumo Tabaci. Marburg, 1628.

Aguilar: Contra il mal uso del Tabaco. Cordova, 1633.

Frankenius: Dissertatio de virtutibus Nicotianæ. Upsal, 1633.

Ostendorf: Traité de l'usage et de l'abus du Tabac. Paris, 1636.

Venner: Via recta ad vitam longam. London, 1637. (See p. 363, for an entertaining discourse on Tobacco.)

Ferrant: Traité du Tabac en sternutatoire. Bourges, 1645.

Cuffari: I biasimi del Tabacco. Palermo, 1645.

Vitaliani: De abusu Tabaci. Rome, 1650.

Tapp: Oratio de Tabaco. Helmstadt, 1653.

Balde: Satyra contra abusum Tabaci. Munich, 1657.

Magnenus: Exercitationes XIV. de Tabaco. Ticino, 1658.

Rumsey: Organum Salutis. London, 1659.

Paulli: Commentarius de abusu Tabaci Americanorum veteri. Argentorat. 1665.

Baillard: Discours du Tabac. Paris, 1668.

De Prade: Histoire du Tabac. Paris, 1677.

Van Bontekoe: Korte verhandeling van t' menschenleven gezondheit, ziekte en dood, etc. s' Gravenhagen, 1684.

Worp Beintema: Tabacologia, ofle korte verhandelinge over de Toback. s' Gravenhagen, 1690.

Fagon: Dissertatio an ex Tabaci usu frequenti vita brevior. Paris, 1699.

Brunet: Le bon usage du Tabac en poudre. Paris, 1700.

Della Fabra: Dissertatio de animi affectibus, etc. Ferrara, 1702.

Manara: De moderando Tabaci usu in Europæis. Madrid, 1702.

Nicolicchia: Uso ed abuso del Tabacco. Palermo, 1710.

Keyl: Dissertatio num Nicotianæ herbæ usu levis notæ maculam contrahat. Leipsic, 1715.

Cohausen: Pica nasi, seu de Tabaci sternutatorii abusu et noxa. Amsterdam, 1716.

Meier: Tabacomania. Nordhaus, 1720.

– : A Dissertation on the Use and Abuse of Tobacco in Relation to Smoaking, Chewing, and taking of Snuff. London, 1720.

Plaz: De Tabaco sternutatorio. Leipsic, 1727.

Stahl: Dissertatio de Tabaci effectibus salutaribus et nocivis. Erfurt, 1732.

Maloet: Dissertatio an a Tabaco, naribus assumpto, peculiaris quædam cephalalgiæ species, aliique effectus. Paris, 1733.

Alberti: De Tabaci fumum sugente theologo. Halle, 1743.

Garbenfeld: Dissertatio de Tabaci usu et abusu. Argent. 1744.

Beck: De suctione fumi Tabaci. Altdorf, 1745.

Büchner: De genuinis viribus Tabaci. Halle, 1746.

Herment: Dissertatio an post cibum fumus Tabaci, etc. Paris, 1749.

De la Sone: Dissertatio an Tabacum homini sit lentum venenum. Paris, 1751.

Ferrein: Dissertatio an ex Tabaci usu frequenti vitæ summa brevior. Paris, 1753.

Petitmaitre: De usu et abusu Nicotianæ. Basil, 1756.

Triller: Disputatio de Tabaci ptarmici abusu, affectus ventriculi causa. Wittenberg, 1761.

Cuntira: De viribus medicis Nicotianæ ejusque usu et abusu. Vienna, 1777.

Hamilton: De Nicotianæ viribus in Medicina et de ejus malis effectibus in usu communi et domestico. Edinburgh, 1779.

Clarke: A dissertation on the Use and Abuse of Tobacco. London, 1797.

Szerlecki: Monographie über den Tabak. Stuttgart, 1840.

Stahmann: Cigarre, Pfeife, und Dose. Quedlinburg, 1852.

Baldwin: Evils of Tobacco. New York, 1854.

Trall: Tobacco, its History, etc. New York, 1854.

– : Discours contre l'usage du Tabac. Nantes, 1854.

– : Discours en faveur du Tabac. Nantes, 1854.

Tiedemann: Geschichte des Tabaks. Frankfort, 1854.

Vlaanderen: Over den Tabak, bijzonder over zijne on bewerktuigde bestanddeelen. Utrecht, 1854.

Felip: El Tabaco. Madrid, 1854.

Hortmann: Der Tabaksbau. Emmerich, 1855.

Von Bibra: Die Narkotischen Genussmittel und der Mensch. Nürnberg, 1855.

Tognola: Riflessioni intorno all' uso igenico del Tabacco. Padua, 1855.

– : A Commentary on the Influence which the Use of Tobacco exerts on the Human Constitution. Sydney, 1856.

Jarnatowsky: De Nicotiana ejusque abusu. Berlin, 1856.

Asencio: Reflexiones sobre la renta del Tabaco. Madrid, 1856.

Hammond: The Physiological Action of Alcohol and Tobacco upon the Human Organism. American Journal of Medical Sciences. October, 1856.

Budgett: The Tobacco Question, Morally, Socially, and Physically. London, 1857.

Cavendish: A few Words in Defence of Tobacco. London, 1857.

Jeumont: Du Tabac, de son Usage, de ses Effets, etc. Paris, 1857.

Lizars: On the Use and Abuse of Tobacco. London, 1857.

Steinmetz: Tobacco. London, 1857.

Alexandre: Contre l'abus du Tabac. Amiens, 1857.

Fermond: Monographie du Tabac. Paris, 1857.

Koller: Der Tabac. Augsburg, 1858.

Prescott: Tobacco and its Adulterations. London, 1858.

Schmid: Der Tabak als wichtige Culturpflanze. Weimar, 1858.

Demoor: Du Tabac. Brussels, 1858.

Mourgues: Traité de la Culture du Tabac. Paris, 1859.

Morand: Essai sur l'Hygiène du Tabac. Epinal, 1859.

Fairholt: Tobacco, its History and Associations. London, 1859.

Cheever: On Tobacco. Atlantic Monthly, August, 1860.