By B. W. RICHARDSON, M.D.

It is the business of science to take up the pint and a half of ardent spirit which, split up through fifteen pints, gives all the zest and consequence to the thirteen and a half pints of colored water.

Taking this ardent spirit into one of her crucibles or laboratories, Science compares it with other products on the shelves there, and soon she finds its niche in which it fits truly. On the shelf where it fits she has ranged a number of other spirits. There is chloroform, ether, sweet spirit of nitre, and some other fluids, very useful remedies in the hands of the physician. These, she sees, are the children of the spirit, are made, in fact, from it. On the same shelf she has another set of spirits; there is wood spirit, there is potato spirit, there is a substance which looks like spermaceti; and these she sees are all members of the same family, not children, this time, of the ardent spirit, but brothers or sisters, each one constructed from the same elements, in the same relative proportions and on the same type. Passionless, having no predilection for any one object in the universe except the truth, she writes down the ardent spirit as having its proper place in a group of chemical substances which are distinctly apart from other substances she knows of, on which men and animals live, and which are called by the name of foods or sustainers of life. She says all the members of the spirit family are, unless judiciously and even skilfully used, inimical to life. They produce drowsiness, sleep, death. In the hands of the skilful they may be safe as medicines; in the hands of the unskilful they are unsafe, they are poisons. To this rule there is not one exception amongst them. There can be no demur, no doubt now on this particular point; it may be a blow to poetry of passion; it may make the ancient and modern bacchanalian look foolish to tell him that wine is a chemical substance mixed and diluted with water, and that beer and spirits are all in the same category; but such is the fact. In computing the influence of wine, men have no longer to discuss anything more than the influence of a definite chemical compound, one of a family of chemical compounds called the alcohols—the second of a family group, differing in origin from the first of the series, which is got from wood, in that it is got from grain, and is called ethylic, or common alcohol, pure spirit of wine. But now the world turns properly to ask another question. Admitted all that is said, why, after all, should the practice of mankind in the use of this spirit be bad? Man is not guided solely by reason; passion may lead him sometimes, perchance, in the true path. Tell us then, O Science! why this ardent spirit may not still be drunken; why may it not be a part of the life of man?

To this question the answer of Science is straight and to the point. In the universe of life, she says, man forms but a fractional part. All the sea is full of life; all the woods are full of life; all the air is full of life; on the surface of the earth man possesses, as companions or as enemies, herds and herds of living forms. Of that visible life he forms but a minute speck, and beyond that visible life there is the world invisible to common view, with its myriads of forms unseen, which the most penetrating microscope has not reached. Again, there are other forms of life; plants innumerable, from gigantic Wellingtonias to lichens and mosses, and beneath these myriads more so infinitely minute that the microscope fails to reach them. This is all life, life which goes through its set phases in due form; grows in health and strength and beauty, every part of it, from highest to lowest living grade, without a shade of the use of this strong spirit. What evidence can be more conclusive that alcohol is not included in the scheme of life?

And yet, if you want more evidence, it is yours. You try man by himself. Every child of woman born, if he be not perverted, lives without alcohol, grows up without it; spends—and this is a vital point—spends the very happiest part of its life without it; gains its growing strength and vitality without it; feels no want for it. The course of its life is, at the most, on the average of the best lives, sixty years, of which the first fifteen, in other words, the first fourth, are the most dangerous; yet it goes through that fourth without the use of this agent. But if in the four stages of life it can go through the first and most critical stage without alcohol, why can not it traverse the remaining three? Is Nature so unwise in her doings, so capricious, so uncertain, that she withholds a giver of life from the helpless, and supplies it only to the helpful? Some men, forming whole nations, have never heard of it; some have heard of it and have abjured its use. In England and America, at this time, there are probably near upon six millions of persons who have abjured this agent. Do they fall or fail in value of life from the abjuration? The evidence, as we shall distinctly see by and by, is all the other way. There are, lastly, some who are forced to live without the use of this agent. Do they fall or die in consequence? There is not a single instance in illustration.

On all these points, Science, when she is questioned earnestly, and interpreted justly, is decisive and firm, and if you question her in yet another direction, she is not less certain. You ask her for a comparison of alcohol and of man, in respect to the structure of both, and her evidence is as the sun at noon in its clearness. She has taken the body of man to pieces; she has learned the composition of its every structure—skin, muscle, bone, viscera, brain, nervous cord, organs of sense! She knows of what these parts are formed, and she knows from whence the components came. She finds in the muscles fibrine; it came from the fibrine of flesh, or from the gluten or albumen of the plants on which the man had fed. She finds tendon and cartilage, and earthy matter of the skeleton; they were from the vegetable kingdom. She finds water in the body in such abundance that it makes up seven parts out of eight of the whole, and that she knows the source of readily enough. She finds iron, that she traces from the earth. She finds fat, and that she traces to sugar and starch. In short, she discovers, in whatever structure she searches, the origin of the structure. But as a natural presence, she finds no ardent spirit there in any part or fluid. Nothing made from spirit. Did she find either, she would say the body is diseased, and, it may be, was killed by that which is found.

Sometimes, in the bodies of men, she discovers the evidences of some conditions that are not natural. She compares these bodies with the bodies of other men, or with the bodies of inferior animals, as sheep and oxen, and finds that the unnatural appearances are peculiar to persons who have taken alcohol, and are indications of new structural changes which are not proper, and which she calls disease.

Thus, by two tests, Science tries the comparison between alcohol and man. She finds in the body no structure made from alcohol; she finds in the healthy body no alcohol; she finds in those who have taken alcohol changes of the structure, and those are changes of disease. By all these proofs she declares alcohol to be entirely alien to the structure of man. It does not build up the body; it undermines and destroys the building.

One step more. If you question Science on the comparison which exists between foods and alcohol, she gives you facts on every hand. She shows you a natural and all-sufficient and standard food—she calls it milk. She takes it to pieces; she says it is made up of caseine, for the construction of muscular and other active tissues; of sugar and fat, for supplying fuel to the body for the animal warmth; of salts for the earthy, and of water for the liquid parts. This is a perfect standard. Holds it any comparison with alcohol? Not a jot. The comparison is the same with all other natural foods.

Man, going forth to find food for his wants, discovers it in various substances, but only naturally, in precisely such substances, and in the same proportions of such substances as exist in the standard food on which he first fed. Alcohol, alien to the body of man, is alike alien to the natural food of man.

Some of you will perhaps ask: Is every use of food comprised in the building up of the body? Is not some food used as the fuel of the engine is used, not to produce material, but to generate heat and motion, to burn and to be burned? The answer is as your question suggests. Some food is burned in the body, and by that means the animal fire—the calor vitalis, or vital heat, of the ancients—is kept alive. Then, say you: May not alcohol burn? We take starch, we take sugar into the body, as foods, but there are no structure of starch and sugar, only some products derived from them which show that they have been burned. May not alcohol in like manner be burned and carried away in new form of construction of matter?

What says Science to this inquiry? Her answer is simple. To burn and produce no heat is improbable, if not impossible; and if probable or even possible, is unproductive of service for the purpose of sustaining the animal powers. Test, then, the animal body under the action of alcohol, and see your findings. Your findings shall prove that, under the most favorable conditions, the mean effect of the alcohol will be to reduce the animal temperature through the mass of the body. There will be a glow of warmth on the surface of the body. Truly! but that is cooling of the body. It is from an extra sheet of warm blood brought from the heart into weakened vessels of the surface, to give up its heat and leave the whole body chilled, with the products of combustion lessened, the nervous tone lowered, the muscular power reduced, the quickened heart jaded, the excited brain infirm, and the mind depressed and enfeebled. Alcohol, alien to the structure of man and to the food of man, is alike alien to living strength of man, and to the fires which maintain his life.