"I will tell you who can't take alcohol, and that is very important in the present day. Of all the people I know who cannot stand alcohol, it is the brain-workers; and you know it is the brain-workers that are increasing in number, and that the people who do not use their brains are going down, and that is a noteworthy incident in relation to the future. I find that the men who live indoors, who have sedentary habits, who work their nervous systems, and who get irritable tempers, as such people always do, unless they take a large balance of exercise to keep them right (which they rarely do), I say that persons who are living in these fast days get nervous systems more excitable and more irritable than their forefathers, and they cannot bear alcohol so well."

Speech at Exeter Hall, Feb. 7, 1877.