gerous excess. This form of disease has been named the mania a potu, and is one of the most desperate of the alcoholic evils. The victims of this class are not habitual drunkards or topers, but at sudden intervals they madden themselves with the spirit; they repent; reform; get a new lease of life; relapse. In intervals of repentance they are worn with remorse and regret; in the intervals of madness they are the terrible members of the community. In their furious excitement they spread around their circle the darkness of desolation, fear and despair. Their very footsteps carry dread to those who, most helpless and innocent, are under their fearful control. They strike their dearest friends; they strike themselves. Retaining sufficient nervous power to wield their limbs, yet not sufficient to guide their reason, they become the dangerous alcoholic criminals whom our legislators, fearing to touch the cause of their malady, would fain try to cure by scourge and chain.

"To us physiologists these "maniacs a potu” are men under the experiment of alcohol, with certain of their brain centers (which I could fairly define if the present occasion were befitting) paralyzed, and with a broken balance, therefore, of brain power, which we with infinite labor and much exactitude have learned to understand. Our remedy for such aberration of nervous function, if we were legislators, would be simple enough. We should not whip the maniac back again to the drink; we should try to break up the evil by taking the drink from the maniac. But then we are, only physiologists. We have nothing to do with that £117,000,000 of invested capital, and we are not practical in reference to it."

"The most solemn fact of all bearing upon these mental aberrations produced by alcohol, and upon the physical not less than the mental, is that the mischief on man by his own act and deed cannot fail to be transferred to those who descend from him and who are thus irresponsibly afflicted. Amongst the many inscrutable designs of nature none is more manifest than this, that physical vice, like physical feature and physical virtue, descends in line. It is, I say, a solemn reflection, for every man and every woman, that whatever we do to ourselves so as to modify our own physical conformation and mental type, for good or for evil, is transmitted to genera

DR. RICHARDSON'S VERDICT.

55

tions that have yet to be. Not one of the transmitted wrongs, physical or mental, is more certainly passed on to those yet unborn than the wrongs which are inflicted by alcohol. We, therefore, who live to reform the present age in this respect are stretching our powers to the next to purify it; to beautify, and to lead it toward that millennial happiness and blessedness, which in the fullness of time shall visit even the earth, making it under an increasing light of knowledge a garden of human delight, a Paradise regained."

"In summary of what has past, I may be briefness itself," says Dr. Richardson. "The chemical substance alcohol-an artificial product devised by man for his purpose, and in many things that lie outside his organism a useful substance is neither a food nor a drink suitable for his natural demands. Its application as an agent that shall enter the living organization is properly limited by the learning and skill possessed by the physician-a learning that itself admits of being recast and revised in many important details and perhaps in principles.

"If this agent do really for the moment cheer the weary and impart a flush of transient pleasure to the unwearied who crave for mirth, its influence (doubtful even in these modest and moderate degrees) is an infinitesimal advantage, by the side of an infinity of evil for which there is no compensation and no human cure."

CHAPTER V.

SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATIONS.

When Liebig's Theory was Supreme-Alcohol in the Brain of a Dead Debauchee-The Alcoholic Alphabet-How the Liquor gets out of the Body-Is it Poison, Food, or Medicine?-How the Dictionaries define the Terms-Dr. Hammond's Experiments with a Dog.-His List of Diseases created by the use of Alcohol-His Letter to the AuthorLiteral Meaning of the Word "Intoxication "The use of Poisons for Medical Purposes-The use of Beer-Its Stupefying Effects on its Devotees The Cruel Results which have followed the wide use of BeerHow Old Appetites have been awakened and New Ones created.

RIOR to the investigations of Lallemand, Perrin and

PRO

Duroy, already briefly considered, which were very minute and extensive, and continued for several years, and the first account of which was published in 1860, the theory of Liebig, that alcohol was decomposed and furnished heat to the system, and that no part of it left the body unchanged, but combining with oxygen passed out as carbonic acid and water, was generally embraced. He did not, by his theory, however, oppose total abstinence, because he admitted that fat was much better as a heat producer, and of far more value. His ipse dixit made, it is said upon very slight investigation, seems to have been accepted on account of his great fame, and has since been completely overthrown. Just what is the method of action of alcohol in the body is still in doubt, but some great errors have been corrected, and, facts which control the question as one of practical consequence to society, have been firmly established since Liebig's day. It is not known that any alimentary substance passes the system without change unless the organs fail of their function, as in case of diabetes and albuminaria.

In 1831, Dr. James Kirk, of Scotland, found alcohol in the brain of a dead debauchee, and burned it in a spoon. Dr Ogston examined the body of a woman who, being drunk, fell into the Aberdeen canal and was drowned, and with two of